Well, Millstone, Cistern, Cliff (1892), and: Cezanne at Aix. A capo: Self-portrait as the Gardener Vallier, 1906

Well, Millstone, Cistern, Cliff (1892)

for Paul Cezanne

The cistern has run dry. Now the stone well,shaped rock and unshaped, collects sound, and whatis beyond sound, the crackle of wrinkled stemscurling to flame. Watercolor scratched,scraped to bare stock—trees, saplings, twigs.Roots and brush, windfall limbs and fallen trunks.

Broken, unbroken ground. A tent of shavings, tinder,leaves, wick and wicker bleached to windless scraps,rag and bone for the match. Canvas of oil and graphite,artist's paper of charcoal and flint. A table, a candle,a workshop of candles, a bench of burning sight.

Winding back to the village, threading sycamoreand elm, a ribbon of unribboning steps that vanish,packed clay turned dirt cobbled stone, the first dropsof rain pattering on pickets, spattering a gate.

Roof tile and slate, forked branch and fernbeginning to blossom and burn, palette knife windworking, edging open door and window frame, thresholdof the weather to come, already arriving, the pourand slather and following mist that breatheand fan household and land ablaze.

What were you feeling, old young man,haunting that grove, leaf-holdwhere a millstone was cut and hauled,makings for the mill that never was built.

Gathering colors, one after another, brother ofhalf patches, stepfather of quarter tones broughtto a sketch, an easel, like offerings for a poor box.Open air tent, tabernacle and altar cloth wherethe silence swells, running and sweeping a shorethat has no need of other tides. Hard to get down,

hard to let go. No, not the colors or pigments, notthe blunted stabs of pencils grains of mineralsand daubs of washed clays, andnot the pounding storm or slashing gale that paressharpens and drives grass blade and pine strawinto the side of barn fence post and pine.

Only the timed give and take, right hand and left,the rhythms of the water clock ribs,this free flight of wind, lift of limb, bird wing of breaththat chalice and paten the bones, the workaday canvasof harvest and prayer. Slashing, stroking, patching,repairing. Coming about. And always

under sea the eddy and ebb, below and withinand between each pulse, the bead and bellof the unknown, unwatered life.

Cezanne at Aix. A capo: Self-portrait as the Gardener Vallier, 1906

Dapper gent. My cap goes off to him. Trudging the morning,plodding the evening, doing his rounds like a penitent, a pilgrimmaking the stations, touching canvases unfinishedand complete, revisiting the riverbanks, small hills of the oils,the watery cliffs of that mountain, slumping a little,less than clearheaded, not yet awake.

The way pigments settle or swim or stray, drift like dust,spill like leaves, shafts of sunlight drinking the water,a soup kitchen of carrots, pink and russet onions,heavy-rumped turnips, misty-eyed grapes, the water ringsof spectacles ghosting the booksgnarled fingers shelve or remove, butcher paper like a thrift,a make-do altar cloth draped over the ledge, ragged,uneven, waiting for the word,the server sacristan or nun to redo a hem,set things straight.

Beyond the angles, coved walls and deckled roofs,arched doorways and leaded windowpanes,how nature tumbles and sprawls, one tree after anotherdrawing the eye forward, pulling the curtains of vision back.

It is too late or I am too far lost to stumble nowover words, shapes, even the old sawsof cart and horse, engine coal tender and caboose.

Cylinder, cone, square.A litter of pups chewing on scraps,going to town with the heel and toe of an old sock.

Forty years, donkey and donkey driver, my shadowfalling behind or beside or ahead, and that other,packing the gear. Wearing the straw hat. Rummaging

skeletons, the relics of this crag and outcroplandscape, notes from a daybook, scrawls in a backcountryjournal that come to no clear point,arrive at no conclusion, the view no darker or richerthan the...