Poem for Cimabue’s Madonna

Paris Louvre Painting 1280 Cimabue - Madonna and Child in Majesty Surrounded by Angels.

Streets and snow
White paint freshness
Ladders and the angels
Going up and coming down
Into a manhole in the street

Telephone boxes and demons
Circling the ring-road
Boulders and centaurs and flying angels
Billowing cloaks alizarin and corn flower
Wings in hues of cobalt and lapis
In tints of madder.

Layers and layers of antiquity
Their green faces peer from Cimabue’s plank
Gold deadly gleaming Madonna
Secure in her entourage of heavenly bodies.
“Angels. Up” she cries
And at once the eight wings of rainbow extend in an arc over her halo.

And she rises with the colours
Prismatic in her face, in her eyes
Permeating her body in a
Heavenly cloud –
rising.


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