On a Show of Contemporary
Wave Paintings in the Fitzwilliam



The painter of these accomplished seascapes
put streaks, smears, dots, hints of red
into her troubled surface,
to imply a limit, a mingling of forces
so that what we see
is not a pure ferocity.

Unlike the real storm, it must be said,
in which no red
relieves the black and the cold blue
and the green and leprous white,
and the mortal grays unknown of men–
and the black, which bears listing yet again.

Which is why the turbulence of which your playful colors sing
is worse than what you paint, or feared, or anything.