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“Cloud Study”
John Constable
English, 1776–1837
“Cloud Study”
c. 1821–22
Oil on laminate cardboard.
Manton Art Foundation collection
The Clark Art Institute
were you there
it would cost a tilted head
and all yourself a moment
lofted nothing
fragmented whole
whispered far away
enraptured without dramatics
or pathos full of yearning
or the chanted blood-borne message
or quip wiggled hips waggled
full of nothing fills everything
peach and pale and gray and forever paused
our story sung
plays soft mortar the bricklayer’s perfunctory toil
becomes a dancing wrist
binds souls to a letterhead facade
away drifting skies
fill your lungs with a breath the taste of dreaming
away drifts the sky
and we are frozen here the never
Click for a little tour video from the Tate presented by the founder of the . . . Cloud Appreciation Society.
So English.
