The blackest square was hard to miss.
Jammed – iconic – in the upper corner
of a crowded room, a cabinet de tableaux
to mark the zero degree of painting.
The blackest soil is found near Kyiv.
Chernozem: dark humus crumbles through
her hands, cool and damp it limnes her grasp.
Did this dark earth inform his work?
Look close, that square is out of kilt –
its surface rough, the fractured layers
obscure a script that links it back
to Bilhaud and Allais (a struggle far away)
Yet now it’s near and my quadrangled screen
reveals another’s form. Charred twisted limbs,
a lover’s grief, as battle on the ground
sows disbelief and this dark earth becomes
A charnell vault.
The blackest square
is found near Kyiv
Born in Bandon, west Cork, Derval Tubridy now divides her time between Dublin and London where she lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her most recent book is Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Jammed – iconic – in the upper corner
of a crowded room, a cabinet de tableaux
to mark the zero degree of painting.
The blackest soil is found near Kyiv.
Chernozem: dark humus crumbles through
her hands, cool and damp it limnes her grasp.
Did this dark earth inform his work?
Look close, that square is out of kilt –
its surface rough, the fractured layers
obscure a script that links it back
to Bilhaud and Allais (a struggle far away)
Yet now it’s near and my quadrangled screen
reveals another’s form. Charred twisted limbs,
a lover’s grief, as battle on the ground
sows disbelief and this dark earth becomes
A charnell vault.
The blackest square
is found near Kyiv
Born in Bandon, west Cork, Derval Tubridy now divides her time between Dublin and London where she lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her most recent book is Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
