Dredgers churn the seabed,
A sunlit lighthouse gleams
On the sea-front where he strolled,
After painting some French interior
In mahogany, bronze or gold.
Fishermen squatted and joked,
Yawned, stretched on the quay,
Waiting for fish to bite,
As he caught their slippery shapes
In tricky channel light.
In Normandy his ochres play
Against cerulean blue.
A white casino fronts the tide,
Gamesters play intent within,
Turquoise waves parade outside.
Grands couturiers loved a man
Who woke their sybaritic eye.
Animals gambol on a chair,
Prance and weave on a fine divan,
Fringed by verse of Apollinaire.
He headed south. An oily nymph,
An opalescent butterfly,
Enjoying fine French weather,
Arabesque from his icing gun
In calligraphies of colour.
Under a blue reflective sky
San Marco’s statues nod together.
Transparent lovers stroll and call
Beneath the doves with cherub wings
Which flutter saints on the palace wall.
Only the year by his name,
Dufy ‘38, hints at a fall.
His rococo wears no trace of cold;
The world cavorts in carnival,
Venice struts on water and gold.
He travelled north - Ascot, Henley,
Flaunt their full regalia,
But a snatch of cloud is all we find
Of London, a curve on space,
A ripple in the concentrated wind.
Down south a child’s graffito
Of a black bull scrapes the ground,
Snorts on the sun’s black carpet.
A shadow ship flaunts a red flag still,
Drawing into Bouville.
©Terry Hodgson2020
Comments