THE YEAR OF THE KILN PORTRAITS

I came in from planting more trees.

I was sweating, and flopped down aslant

on the sofa. You and Clare were sitting

at the lunch table, singing as you do

in harmony even I hear as beautiful,

mezzo-soprano and soprano,

for anything Arno. You winked at me

and, liquescent as my face was,

I must have looked like the year

you painted all our portraits, lovingly,

exquisitely, on ceramic tiles

in undrying oil, just one

or at most two colours at a time,

and carried them braced oblique, wet,

in plastic ice-cream boxes to town.

It was encaustic painting,

ancient Rome’s photography, that gets

developed in successive kiln firings

till it lives, time-freed, transposed

in behind a once-blank glaze.

Afterwards, you did some figured tiles

for our patchwork chimney, then stopped.

In art, you have serious gifts. But it’s

crazy: you’re not driven. Not obsessive.