On The Traditional Way Of Painting Poem by Martin Harrison

A sea-leaf is laid across the bark:
I’ve given up talking
save through the world as it is.

But the leaf is no philosopher.
It’s just an edge, a flare-mark,
and not a thing in itself.

The light moves in with the colours which it gives,
it’s used here as an instrument
in a pattern of camouflaged stones.

Here I see the way I walk,
here I become the shadow,
the bleached crab-shell among pebbles,

and I notice how a thin sheet of rock slants into the sun.
Everyone lives and hunts and fishes,
everyone lives and is well.

A hot wind bursts in my face and round my neck,
drowning out the glare of the beach’s multi-coloured shells.
Blue surf topples under the ledges of my ears.

Like fire in a grate the flicker of the sea-wrack’s leaf —
while the red-daubed wooden fish clack against each other
with bark twine threaded through their tails.