Tag: Frantisek Kupka

For years she had lain
horizontal. and long, long 
after the spring flush of lust
had passed. Patches of green
once fresh fleshed, putrefying 
just the one thin coverlet
cold years of dust
on the painter's blue-grey nude

And searching out Eurydice
amongst the attic bric-à-brac
he stroked with filbert brush and fan 
in paint, poured moulds of music
note by note and piece by piece
a ketonet passim* so fine and warm
for exit from her underworld

Out of the hellish core
molten as passions
she rises. Up through
narrow vented organ pipes
squeezed hotter still. 
Within this pyrotechnic thrust
some ashen clouds stripped
from storms at sea, and patchwork
scrub of Oxley green. Higher and higher
a suffocating symphony of verticals
for her singed and singing face  

• ketonet passim – from Hebrew as per the biblical Joseph’s ‘ coat of many colours’
• Orpheus and Eurydice – a Greek myth
• Orphism – the trend in abstract art, to which Kupka subscribed, for painting to have musical qualities see here