Jim Newcombe 

 

 

THE PASSION OF ADMIRAL PUGGY BOOTH

“I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; I was lashed for four hours,
and I did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it if I did.”

(J.M.W. Turner, on painting ‘Snowstorm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth’)

Under spittled, blown, obliterated foam

he was trussed to the mast so he could witness

stormy kaleidoscopes of hackle and plume

at his own bidding, to paint and encompass

oceanic visions. Picture him there

in the dance of the lurching tide, buffeted

and scuffed by snow-laced lashes of swept air,

his gibbet the crossbar of the masthead,

the tilting steamboat like a toy ship tossed       

on whale-heavy waves, the painter’s wincing limbs

fastened there like Odysseus to the mast

before the fatal persuasion of the sirens.

 

How did the mind then compress, translate, transfuse

the sun-thrilled seething of the wuthering flakes,

the husky clamour of tunnelweb waves

wefting in guffs?  How did the hand remake

the unassailable riot, framing the flux

of water-pelt, wind-flex, the flinch and blanch

of weathered flesh, the sail in the focal vortex

reflecting the nuclear sun?  The avalanche

of glassy shatterings, the whole world’s form,

spun from the mazy hollows of a seashell,

is a mere drop of water in a storm

that smoulders in the furnace of his will.

 

The sun enflames the tidal concertina.

Luminous fumes, glacial exhalations,

seraphic in the nebulous atmosphere,

exalt the common man. Great affirmations

of the spirit hoisted high. Chaos seems serene

as if pigment smeared on canvas could suffice

to make the cosmic order reconvene.

The sun’s holocaust upon the ice

a blinding clarity of disbodied nature

where all things that come into his sight

entranced in each obliterated feature,

nettled with hail, lacquered with burning light.

 

Say then the true bearing of the artist’s mind

is a reflex to rouse and contradict

as a cyclone that runs contrary to the wind,

eliding concepts of scale and impact

in a brushstroke, the bright invincible

energy of life brought to light again

with palette knife impasto, welter of scumble,

the bristle-flick of spindrift like spat phlegm,

the volcanic will erupting and collapsing

in art of intense resistance that receives,

with immense vigour and panache, the gathering

crescendo of the warring, lawless waves.