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Father, Gaugin, Mr Hyde
my father’s hands
the ones that machine-gunned the Med at seventeen
that stoked the furnace of fleet steam engines
and gripped my mother’s arms till she was blue
are hands that stroked Melanesian skin
and painted tropic purple nights
holding Rousseau’s brush and Kipling’s pen
my father’s hands
no longer gentle no longer hard
lie bony white benign
across his heart
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Purple Prose, for Rousseau
I’ve been ogling your Still Life with Tropical Fruit, Henri,
with its pendulous melons, phallic bananas, and vulval paw-paws, wide-open and wet,
and I’ve wondered what life was like in the Toll House,
checking contraband and taxing French carts.
(Did you throw all the Old World fruit in the bin?)
and I suppose you paid penance, in the Jardine des Plantes,
immersing yourself in plant odours and sweat,
to fill your canvas with colour and heat,
and I wanted you to know, gabelou,
that I’ve laid on the edge of a hot continent,
stuffed with custard apples, slathering fruit from tongue to chin,
dripping sticky juice that sugars in the sun,
pregnant, with ripe papaya,
sucking the syrup that incites madness and riots,
and I understand your need to paint fruit.
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