Starry Night Over the Rhône
Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas, Arles 1888.
A quay on the riverbank.
Lovers dissolve in a sheen
of violet and mauve — enveloped
by a forget-me-not cold glow.
The man’s harsh words are crests and troughs
of Prussian blue across the Rhône.
Hers are shrill — brazen lamplight descends
to russet-bronze, burns on troubled water.
Shadowed boats bereft of sail
absorb the surge and slap
constrained by a blue-grey chink
of mooring chains.
Above the brutal gold of gas-flame —
an ultramarine arc of sky flaunts
a swing of constellations —
emerald, ruby, sapphire
opal and polished lapis lazuli.
This night ‘more richly coloured than the day’
holds some remote hope
in the dazzle of a field of stars.
Denise Bundred has an MA in Writing and won the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2016. She has poems in various anthologies & magazines. Litany of a Cardiologist was published in 2020.
wordpress.com/denise-bundred