Champ de blé, Claude Monet, 1881
There’s a brilliance to this day which is almost
audible, as though such days come in the round –
sound filtered through sound, light filtered
through light. Ahead a band of orange-gold,
the saturated cousin of last night’s full moon,
and in the foreground upflicked silvery alfalfa –
two crops and a path positioned agreeably
off-centre; the sky a brushwork of cirrus.
He would have posed Camille on the path
to show the viewer what to feel, how to be.
But now that she has been taken
he must make the day’s rarified rondure so bien vrai –
the precious metals, the path curving like a bow –
that they will know what to feel without her.
Helen Farish’s fifth collection, Monet’s Broom, will be published
by Bloodaxe in November to mark the centenary of the artist’s death
