To refocus on this rectangle. No larger than the servants' mirror

I say: Black is a shade of white. Clouds sails sea-crest. Black-tipped gull comes to rest. In the rest. I say: No creak or wash. Or even swell. Fishing Boats in a Calm. I say I am rendered. Wordless the memory of a memory of men. Loading a ship dreamt about, starkly. What can I say?

I say: The reflection of the wet twenty-first century Liverpool day ripples a buckle of 'board stuck on canvas' that is not the faint breathlessness of this painterly moment nor

choppy

cmuddy green Mersey

the EMMA

MM ruffled

illegibility in the blast

pennant above the main sail

single red-shirt sailor billowing the jib

sets sails

for Brazil

or Africa

the Lamport and Holt ensign

flicks initials

(two bands of red

a ghost 'Emma'

spectral figurehead bare breasted

crashes and tips at the river

to navigate buoys

the Irish Sea

the new worlds

Peer into Bonington's moment for as long as you dare. Stop listening to me. The distended figures on the deck of the ship are not there to be described. Which would re-embody them. In a narrative. Even in a brutal shutter's flash of epiphany. Imagined. Do not listen to me. Depicted re-depicted. Another quarter of an hour. Nothing to say. This unsayable unsaying. Saying nothing. But itself. Carried. Until all is said. Away

Look. Look away. To your left leave the view. In the corner of your eye. Lose it

Listen. Tear the image as though it were rotten canvas. An old painting a dead sail. Turn away. Push me to one side to silence

To the 'third' door. Escape. To

the staircase hall. Between the two pairs of columns. You will sense how the stairs' course was altered. To face you. At last. Or

Part the nets. If anyone is watching. With both your hands. Either side. Framed in the triangle of light. Watching yourself from behind. Now. Do not listen to what I am saying. This was the view they built here. To face the rain. The ruin

Through the curtains. Convince yourself. As in full daylight. You see the same hills or mountains without features

a single ship on the Mersey



– end –