Pictures from a Lifelong Friendship

(Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo)

1. The external

In this painting, one of us (could be

either) sits with the man of her house,

‘making music together.’  The other

(again, either) waits in her own place, 

her cat curled peacefully by, ready 

to share, later, sisterly truths and secrets.

2. The inner

This other painting of us, friend, 

shows us happily travelling, as Harlequin 

and Gypsy. We are dancing as we go. 

The practical bits and pieces are debris;

we are looking up at a sphere of light

we’ve conjured, filled with art.

1. Song of Gomorrah (Carrington)

2. Gypsy and Harlequin (Varo)

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Seventeen. 

Using paintings by lifelong friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo as inspiration to write about a lifelong friendship of my own (with a fellow-poet who is also a painter). I originally included a lot of factual details which also fitted, but then decided to let the images, as described, do all the work.

NaPo directed us to artworks at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, but I had trouble making those links work on this post, so have sent you elsewhere to see the paintings.

Anonymous Recovery

 (Wooden statue whittled by a mental patient)

1.

You think I am vain, 

like the lovely boy

gazing in the pool

at his own reflection.

He lost his head,

didn’t he? – his pretty head –

obsession becoming

a kind of self-rejection.

But when I fixed

on my own image,

it was to recreate it 

for introspection.

I wanted to see

what my soul looked like,

not to show you but myself …

and found it all dejection.

2.

Skinny bugger, 

isn’t he?

I made him out of 

apple wood,

dragging it from where 

it fell.

I carved and smoothed

and shaped

rudimentary knees, face, 

tiny genitals.

(I know he doesn’t

seem well.)

3.

He’s not looking

up or out.

His arms cling

to his sides.

Maybe he doesn’t 

know any better?

What is the 

satisfaction of being?

It’s apparent

he doesn’t know.

His life is not freedom

but a fetter.

4.

Now that I’ve made him,

there are those who suppose

he is me.

It might be so – yet, is he not

something alien? 

You tell me!

Now that I have cut him 

off from myself, I see

what is me.

I’m lighter than smoke

dancing on air, no more weight

stuck to me.

NaPoWriMo Day Twelve.

Based on this item in the American Visionary Art Museum. (The link takes you to the image and also the story behind it.)

Lidded Ritual Grain Container with Lozenges and Scrolls, 6th–5th Century B.C.E.

 

Is it the colour or is it the form,

so full and round,

has me fall in love with this shapely urn

meant to hold grain?

I don’t care what it was made to contain

in the line of imposed need,

its duty,

its purpose to feed.

I simply warm

to its plain beauty; 

I yearn

to clasp and hold 

the whole to my body, or bang

my fingernails on its outer shell

to hear its long, reverberating clang.

It is very old,

coloured faint pink and soft green

(which I think of as colours of healing),

a closer look revealing

those patterns of lozenges and scrolls.

The label says bronze, so I know

it would have that clanging sound,

if I struck it like an instrument: a deep knell

ringing for its past people

and all the places it and they had been – 

like a solemn church bell

that tolls

deep and low

in a lonely steeple.

NaPoWriMo Day Nine

Image of the container, in  the online gallery of the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, from the Chinese art collection: click here and scroll down.

You Cat

 

You are my furry wonderland, you Cat.

No continent’s as rich or rare as you, Cat.

You are a landscape of soft undulations

all moving and shifting as you do, Cat.

Sometimes I run my open hand all along 

your belly or back, tracking through Cat.

Our else I will touch my forehead to yours

and you bump yours against mine too, Cat.

When you gaze at me, giving one slow blink,

I know that is your love for me on view, Cat.

In distress you may look ferocious. At times, 

predator, a ferocity in your aspect is true, Cat.

In this picture, you sit straight up, attentive,

fluffy yet menacing – towards, I ask, who, Cat? 

You have lived with me now in many forms

over the years: black, tabby, sable or blue, Cat.

You continue to live with me, in presence, in

remembrance, and in my reverence for you, Cat.

NaPoWriMo Day Eight.

We were invited to look at pictures from The Museum of Bad Art, and also to write a love poem in the form of a ghazal. I love to play with that form! The final verse is supposed to include one's own name or a reference to oneself. As lovers of Shakespeare know, Rosemary is for remembrance.

The particular cat image from the Museum, which I used for inspiration. (Scroll down one row.)

On Not Being an Inuit Print

 

I am not an enchanted owl,

but I want to be. I want to, like you 

might want strong meat to chew on, 

or else at the opposite extreme 

rich thick creamy chocolate cake

that you might want or I …

but anyway, what I don’t want 

is to be a piece of canvas, or paper

or board, or anything flat, two-

dimensional as a blade of grass.

It’s not that I object to being

Inuit (an Inuit anything) 

because that would make me

racist, wouldn’t it? (Although I 

don’t live in Canada or Alaska

so would it even count?) It’s the 

print bit I don’t like to entertain, 

not when pertaining to me, in my 

good round flesh. But there’s this 

one print I saw just now, when taking

a virtual stroll through a part of 

the Canadian Museum of History.

The Enchanted Owl arrested me, with 

its unblinking gaze, its half-curved

claws caught mid-retraction, and

its wild, expansive, stripes of feathers –

its confronting feathers – paused

for take-off, while this creature (me)

is briefly examined. I want to be the real

alive owl. I want to expand my wings,

cry out in a voice that I – who didn’t paint 

this, or live  there – don’t know, and will 

never. I want to fill out that compact body 

with food and breath, rise up to brush the air 

with sweeps of those enchanting feathers.

NaPoWriMo Day Seven

Print by Kenojuak Ashevik (image)

(Fell madly in love with this image, then learned it's actually a famous 'Canadian icon'.)