you have taught me that ink by-passes time
and takes a back-road from reality
to go on a short-cut through the sublime -
that losing myself is morality
in you and you - and that this and that willow
has refracted black and heavy brush-strokes
into streaks while the lake is a pillow
even for Winter - that black is a yolk
amid all the white where Spring starts to bud -
you said - note the gradual light changes
I do - Wu Guanzhong stirs colour and blood
so that people are the peaks and ranges -
missing the traffic we can join the trunk
road - from the space where reflections have sunk
Blackwells
Oxford
11 December 2018
Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) was an amazing Chinese painter, who studied at the Hangzhou Academy of Art. I am referring to a sequence of paintings on a theme and place he loved. Please refer to his ” Willow Pond Landscape” and ” Spring Willow” paintings, and I think one is entitled ” Winter Willow” ?