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Five Abstractions of Blue Lyrics by Paul Hetherington

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Five Abstractions of Blue
1. Prussian Blue
It is the dense compression of glaciers
that the artist has seized for his paint.
It lives as a flame's after-image
on a plain wall.
It is 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa',
der Werff's 'Entombment of Christ'
and the colour of Mary's grief.
2. Refugee
Not night but the inside of a darkened cell
where every murmur of a life has been stilled,
minutes hanging on reinforced glass
like droplets smeared by a child -
or someone peering into a lake
at restless fronds of weed
standing in refracted haze -
an afternoon as blue
as a faded willow-pattern cup
on a rickety shelf;
as blue as dementia that has let go
of all detail except a child's slow climb
up the rungs inside a well -
the blue-white
of that waiting circle of light.
3. Plumber
Here is a bubbling drain
and a main adjoining pipe.
His eel wriggles towards
a cliff-face's stain of seepage
into an ocean basin.
He stands facing the horizon.
There is blue wherever he looks -
even the horizon
is crossing out of purple,
as if sunset is siphoning day
into an estuary
on the other side
of his blinking observation.
He thinks of the vast flow,
the possible backwash,
the way he stands now in the offing
of that ensconced and draining light;
of his embayment
in the reaching, shallow glow,
its impressionistic shoal.
4. Paragliding
Up here she is in free fall;
up here the wind catches her dropping spiral
and fills her parafoil; up here
she turns across
the shattered rectangles of ground -
all that fuss of traffic and laws
and her unsteady, deflating marriage
dissolved in gravity's tug
and the wind's upthrust. The sky
is thrall and abeyance
and a dense, yellowing blue
that absorbs her ascent;
her single, teardrop wing
stiffened against its harness.
5. Indigo
Soak the leaves
until they ferment, mix lye.
Follow the way of the ancestors;
make cloth that has always been made.
Dress in blue. Don't stand
in the vat during pregnancy.
Look to alter your life.
Escape from the people who claim you
and the village and towns you know.
Set out in the colours you have.
Remove them. Stand in the rain.
Wash your hands in the sea.
Wear the dust of the ground,
the light of the indigo sky
in every elaborate weather.
Notice the blue of your veins.
- Paul Hetherington -
Credits
Paul Hetherington

Paul Hetherington

About “Five Abstractions of Blue” by Paul Hetherington

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