brychar66's video: On And Under Water: Poem by Charles Bryant

On And Under Water (A Midday Reverie of Henry Scott Tuke - for Stephen) Mystify and scowl, forehead to forehead your clear-cut art and penetrating gaze make barriers melt. Ambiguity reaches apotheosis, nuzzles at neck and down the concave back slides its hands until they come to rest on waist and mound. The dark twins accompany this scene of mitigated violence, eschew direction, dedicated to camouflage; suborn the outward. Then the misty pair stare down at us upon the threshing floor, draw the veil across their purposes. Tartar eyes entrap; Tartar poses conform to arabesque and sink. Think where we are going, what we do. Then, surely in the quiet English way, obfuscate while pondering, lest any look of yours declare the passion (it is passion) you withhold like hidden treasure. I shall not, seated naked in the stern, raise any false alarum lest the rower cease his rowing, the naked form slip back into the ocean, sunlight darken. The warmth of the wood is pleasing; the concaves and convexities form a pleasant pattern; full summer glows upon the moving water. Everything conspires to draw me on.... diving, under the skyward membrane we embrace, your skin as slippery as scales - finny arms and legs must interlace here where we are hidden in the veils beneath the ceiling-surface. Dappled coruscations flit across our bodies as we turn together, flickering temptations that in the cooling element burn. * * * * * * * * Poetry, when it arrives - to me at least - is quite often as startling as a sudden thunderclap on a warm and pleasant day. So it was dear Stephen when you sent me that charming painting by Tuke as illustration to a different poem from the one printed here. The effect was instantaneous and produced an immediate inner flow of images, tumbling like water and sparkling like bright sunlight on water. What does the tumble signify, and what is the meaning of the poem? It's really all very simple. The sailor asleep on deck (Tuke's painting 'The Midday Rest' which is the video's second illustration) enters into somnolent reverie which slowly turns into an almost-waking dream. Images of his life beside the water, taken back in time to younger awakenings, glow in his sleeping mind like living reality; and all those scenes recur which he has long forgotten, and resolve themselves into a subaqueous l'après-midi d'un faune in which he delightedly floats until he wakes. Stephen's delightful and informative You Tube channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/sfkcbf