‘La Monte Ste Victoire’, Cezanne

1

They noted nineteen colours on his palette,
how meticulously he cleaned his brushes
so nothing could intrude, but must knock to enter.

The weeks he spent turning this over
to find a stable point, a starting point,
and this was it, the nineteen colours;
not more, nor less.

2

Could, say, Hockney have caught it
in nineteen photographs cut and placed;
a completeness in nineteen days of varied light
of haze, cloud cover, heat
then sealed with the gloss of a photograph
and in close-up the grit of the odd blip of sellotape,
a squeeze-out of glue?

3

To attune to a landscape all noun, solid,
and rendered as verb; the Provence light
like a humming top: stationary, dynamic –
the uplift of a baguette crust, torn for chewing;
smeared plates, saucers, stacked for washing –
fractured completeness, its perspective
fragmenting.

4

Perhaps only Cezanne would allow the canvas
to show through like this, the substrate of materials
speak to us. The scrape of brush hairs on cloth,
that makes the artefact authentic.