On hearing of the death of Gerald Davis

(Gerald Davis: Dublin-born painter and Joycean of Lithuanian Jewish descent,
died June 17th, 2005)


Two small paintings creep up my wall,
A Mask, a Window, twin elements, camouflage,

A world framed: you said I knew your art,
Which was more compliment than I deserved.

I went away from every meeting with a Jazz
CD like a bright, surreal coin in my pocket –

We drank herbal tea sung over, you said, by
A rabbi, hot-spiced from the Holy Land.

How right you were, Bloom of Capel Street,
To hold out for the passing of Poldy’s Day,

Let the sun slip into the sea like a hand
Into a pocket, slip off yourself: dwindlebloom.

One last gush, blast, Yes Yes Yes of work
Seared the eye, went beyond itself, must have

Left a gash in you, the best you’d done; a
CD spinning now, like a model of the universe,

Fogs my cold sitting-room with Kaddisch,
A held top note on the last word, a flourish,

Defining brush-stroke, wing-lift of an ending:
You’d layered so much colour on all that silence,

Voicing each painting, participles of style,
A Capel Street of contrast, a Grafton Street

Of shade, tone, a kidney-breakfast of composition,
A riddling Sandymount of the imagination; still

From wall to wall this labyrinth of self-shaping
Ran indecipherable yet obvious, a willing

Into the face of a sheet blank as death of
Mythographic, musical, bullish last images,

A plump cave-painter busy in the half-light
Of a skittishly pagan Plurabella moon –

No escape this time on self-impaling wings,
Feather-tips curled inwards in tabernacular heat –

You heard the wax melt, saw bright drops
Fuse in Howthy sand, felt a laughing descent into light.
 

                                                        Fred Johnston