Where Constable’s Easel Stood

Quam tenui a filo pendet

Trippers have detached themselves

This Sunday from the suburbs.

They accumulate where Willy Lott

Lived eighty years and spent no more Than four short days away.

Like Constable he was content

With where he dwelt, roamed not

And sought no images but these.

Our floating crowd disturbs the picture.

A tree stands where no tree was

Behind the mill. A line of elms

Has died and others sprung

Since he stood by this spot.

No two days, nor two hours,

Nor two leaves are alike, he said

Of this or any rural scene.

The vibrating air has changed

Of the scheme I recreate

As I reach more open country.

Three fat boys splash by a new lock.

One shakes the tail of a dead fish,

Pretends it still has life.

The wind begins to freshen

As I drift along the path.

In the crook of a bend

The Stour accumulates scum.

These rotten banks and posts

In careless boyhood snagged his heart,

Engaging hand and eye to paint

A busy working river,

The horses leaping cattle-baulks,

Ferried from one towpath to another.

That was his father’s mill - and God's -

The painter watched the clouds

To estimate the wind

And slowly ground to make all his.

He owned six miles by two,

Saw what he knew, and he knew more

Than wise academicians,

Great men though they might be.

Labour blossomed on his canvas,

The mills went round - Sam Strowger knew -

The model Sussex ploughman

Had watched and worked like him,

And learned the names of things.

The lord was leading man among the reapers.

He knew John Constable knew, but no

Committee man knew about the lord.

We look about and ponder

As the scum drifts past,

Spins gently, gathering way.

I retread a path I trod

Through this same meadow.

Trees the painter never saw

Are flecked with memory,

Glint with Constable’s snow.

There is no varnish on this dew,

The lustre is not dry. No tar

Or snuff of candles dries

The slime on river posts -

I love such things, he said.

Even the fat boys glisten

As they towel their backs and boast

While the trippers amble past.

Direct in all he wrote, he knew

His worth without display. Pride

damages vision, stales the air.

(And air which never changes

flies to liver, lights and heart).

Paint where the air is fresh

or open the church doors wide;

It drives out damp and smell of graves.

A graver tone pervades the light;

Ten years before he died

Maria dwindled down the path

A colder northern sun

Scattered his human figures.

Black gulls on dazzling skies,

White gulls on sombre earth,

Circle Hadleigh’s sombre keep.

What time brings, we paint.

Things merge with words I read,

A face I knew, voices never heard.

People mingle with people,

Voices with leaves and clouds,

Clouds and trees with the river.

The scene vibrates, accumulates,

In a bend of the mind.

©Terry Hodgson2020