(The Bathers, Paul Cézanne)
The women are unfinished. They have
unlikely legs, not quite buttocks, undecided
hips. If it is true that they have bathed, if we wish
to believe that there was water, a pool,
they have emerged as fish,
a shoal dragged on to dry light,
left to sprawl on grass. They do not smell
of water or the underwater. They smell of blue.
Reeking of cobalt, cerulean, azure, ultramarine,
their bodies are approximate.
When they have had enough of being
almost made, made up in this imagined bliss,
they will get up, yawning, strip off their fame,
step away from canvas, leaving
on the floor beneath the frame
no water-drops but footprints, glass.
They will look kindly on their own
improbable bodies, dress themselves
in ordinary, put on shoes and socks,
corsets, coats and hats and plastic
macs. I see them waiting at bus stops
and at railway stations. On the trains
that run almost on time, on tracks
of everyday, they make their way
to where the light comes true,
where free comes true, where blue
comes almost true.