Beneath the catastrophic sky

Running rest-day ...

... I know I blipped from this newly discovered volume just last Sunday but I am so taken with Norman Nicholson's work, that I can't resist another!


Grass of Parnassus

The lake is restless as a lover; black,
Green and sheened like oil.
Wet bracken kindles slowly and the brown, charred hills
Hang from the sky like canvas, swaying through the mist.
The water fidgets in the sedge, the bog
Asphodel is rose-hip-red and bitter,
And the landscape flows and swirls like autumn rain.

The heart is restless too:
In the blood's equinox the body rocks,
And a gale blows along the limbs,
Till hands held before the face are scarcely seen.
Yet still in the nook of love the flower lies,
Brittle and metallic, white and veined
Like the iris of an eye -
Perfect as a birth beneath the catastrophic sky.

---

Norman Nicholson (1914-1987)