Spanish Photograph 2
It’s just as well
photographs can’t convey
the stench of these
irrigation ditches
beyond the plain
whitewashed walls
of Fuentevaqueros,
where the sun falls
with the weight of steel
and oranges blaze
in the courtyard
of a dead poet.
Evocation
Out walking one morning
to the rue de Bretagne
through empty
streets and cold
face-slapping air
walls are the colour
of an old newspaper
and each breath
a dense cloud
straight out of Léger
or Monet’s painting
of the Gare St-Lazare
("Spanish Photograph 2" was first published in Quadrant magazine)
Gary Catalano has published widely on both art and literature and is the author of eleven books, among them a Selected Poems published by the University of Queensland Press in 1993. You can read three prose poems by Gary Catalano and a biographical note in Jacket 4. | 