John Seed
CHARDIN
positioned a cut
Pomegranate apple
Dish and spoon plates spoon jar spoon glass
Of water walnuts cloudy plums peaches a red potato
Asking to be touched a cool gnarled pear
Seen to see for the first time once
Light
Gleams on a cherry on porcelain pewter opaque a
Part of the world motionless
Narrative silence nothing easier than
To imagine something else
Light on wood copper two white eggs a cold stone ledge
Sphere becomes ellipse pestle and mortar a white jug
Greys black browns white red
Cone of wild strawberries two carnations two cherries a jar of apricots
A moment moments water
Surface and no sound
Silhouettes in time from which a segment was cut
Chill textures of earthenware lemon orange a surplus of information a bottle’s edge green black
Grapes white napkin basket in all its dry detail impasto
And everything behind eliminated
Precisely missing it takes time
Left in the shadow of this particular light this particular afternoon some
Monday or morning or
Paris 1761
Somewhere the histories of objects in use the bread broken
Lemon half-peeled someone’s knife carefully placed
Ready a wine glass
Half empty I imagine half full
positioned a cut
Pomegranate apple
Dish and spoon plates spoon jar spoon glass
Of water walnuts cloudy plums peaches a red potato
Asking to be touched a cool gnarled pear
Seen to see for the first time once
Light
Gleams on a cherry on porcelain pewter opaque a
Part of the world motionless
Narrative silence nothing easier than
To imagine something else
Light on wood copper two white eggs a cold stone ledge
Sphere becomes ellipse pestle and mortar a white jug
Greys black browns white red
Cone of wild strawberries two carnations two cherries a jar of apricots
A moment moments water
Surface and no sound
Silhouettes in time from which a segment was cut
Chill textures of earthenware lemon orange a surplus of information a bottle’s edge green black
Grapes white napkin basket in all its dry detail impasto
And everything behind eliminated
Precisely missing it takes time
Left in the shadow of this particular light this particular afternoon some
Monday or morning or
Paris 1761
Somewhere the histories of objects in use the bread broken
Lemon half-peeled someone’s knife carefully placed
Ready a wine glass
Half empty I imagine half full
Days are as rushes bent
green in the wind
across the marsh I
saw a woman
near daylight’s end
black waters of the marsh white
lotus buds at nightfall a moment’s
gleam I saw her sway
slight as any rush
listening in the wind
hour after hour
cold I lie awake
shut my eyes and see
remember to see
her face lifted white
lotus green rushes
black water
night
Taxicab shelter Piccadilly 1934
the telephone isn’t ringing
the Aerodyne Merlin radio in the background is
tuned into no station
Bebe Daniels is 34 years old
about to retire from films
and become a radio star
but she doesn’t know this yet
Copyright © John Seed 2019
John Seed lives in London and is the author, inter alia, of 12 collections of verse, most recently Smoke Rising: London 1940-1 (Shearsman 2015), Brandon Pithouse (Smokestack 2016) and melancholy occurrence (Shearsman 2018). His writing has appeared in several anthologies including A Various Art (1987), Iain Sinclair’s London: City of Disappearances (2006) and Neil Astley’s Land of Three Rivers: Poetry of North-East England (2017).