Monet Morning Poem by Tony Jolley

Yesterday morning,
Monet
Must have had a meeting with his Maker:
The mother of all masterclasses
In Pointillism Perfection
Was being played out
Upon a December dawn
Hung between here and Heaven,
Framed by the ruggedness
Of the Vosges and Black Forest ridgelines.

Their palette awash
With violent purples, preternatural violets and marauding mauves,
Raging reds running the whole range of hues
From the palest pink to the blackest of blue-black royal bloods,
And golds:
Golds that glisten and glister only in realms of Glory,
The immortal pair painted upon
A cloud-canvas of cirrus and cumulus,
Leaving Light to stage-manage
The slowly-changing, mise-en-scène:
The Sun’s inclination
Altering the effect of the illumination
For the benefit of those yet a little lower than the angels.

God must have got hooked on the whole idea,
For today Turner’s hand clearly lay behind
The watery mists and limpid shades
Softly shrouding and muting
All figures and forms
And hinting at what might lie,
Lightly veiled from view,
Just a little further off
Behind the stroke of the brush.

We saw Monet and Turner’s
Work and pleasure
At the Paris Grand Palais,
But never did I expect
To see them at work
On my way to work
Taking turns on our slice of sky.