Poem
Vivian Smith
Mosman bay
Mosman bay
Mosman bay
We’ve made a small discovery today.Margaret Preston’s View of Mosman Bay
painted late in 1929
shows the house we’ve lived in thirty years.
It dominates the skyline like a prow.
Seventy years ago, it could be now.
And where an angle does not correspond,
it’s more the artist’s handling of the paint
than changes in the detail of the scene.
A slope of houses cut-out down a cliff,
a vanished garden with a hidden palm,
colored boats that make the bay a pond:
it’s almost what you’d call a postcard view,
and yet a painting, sharp and hard and true.
© 2004, Vivian Smith
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Poems of Vivian Smith
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Mosman bay
We’ve made a small discovery today.Margaret Preston’s View of Mosman Bay
painted late in 1929
shows the house we’ve lived in thirty years.
It dominates the skyline like a prow.
Seventy years ago, it could be now.
And where an angle does not correspond,
it’s more the artist’s handling of the paint
than changes in the detail of the scene.
A slope of houses cut-out down a cliff,
a vanished garden with a hidden palm,
colored boats that make the bay a pond:
it’s almost what you’d call a postcard view,
and yet a painting, sharp and hard and true.
Mosman bay
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