Into the Darkness

Our poetry group had the painting above for its theme a few weeks ago. It is a work by the painter -Peter Witkin in 1999 entitled "Poussin in Hell". One of the delights of the group is that other people select the theme for the week, and we have to write poems based around it, so it can take us out of our normal comfort zone.

Taking a quote from the painter - ""If we lived in perfect bliss, there would not be any need for looking into the darkness, or for art.", I've written this Rondeau with a rentrement in traditional French form. Observant readers will notice a nod to Milton's Paradise Lost.

Into the Darkness

Into the abyss, across the veil of night
The fiend flew onwards, out of sight
New worlds of dark materials made
A landscape fragmented light and shade
And the wasteland, plague ridden blight

A sound of trumpets, as the armies fight
Corpses lay around, bones pale and white
Ghostly wailing, wandering restless shade
Into the abyss

In a ruined house, comes a sacrificial rite
The masque of death, fading of the light
Where flesh, bare, here she lay, decayed
An artist's model, no longer a fair maid
The walls crumble, ending all delight
Into the abyss