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11 Jun 2025
Helen
Laycock
Full
Moon
Grand-Mère en Ciel
After Chagall’s Young Girl in Pursuit,
or Jeune Fille en Marche (1927-28)
The glitter of this memory
is sticky. As I lean moonward,
its pixels thicken into substance,
each rising limb dreamriding until it
finds indigo foothold.
Stars silverprickle my back,
brightwiring me
deeper into the firmament.
Pearls orbit my neck. I remember:
I was her sun.
I pull her in my wake,
barefoot, threshing flames of barley,
and she wings my hair with a fan of lavender,
calming me
in its smoky powder.
Her cane curls warm in my hand,
a membrane of soul veiling my palm,
propelling me,
a white comet on a black run,
to the pinnacle of the glowing space
from where she watches me,
so that we can see the light
of each other
across the emptiness,
knowing that energy
never dies.
Behind the poem...
Marc Chagall‘s Jeune Fille en Marche is an intriguing painting. An apparently gigantic figure, heavily made-up, and wearing what might be the apparel of a performer, is presented against a starry sky, though is gazing beyond it. She holds a crook. Most remarkably of all, a swathe of multi-coloured hair streams in her wake. And inside her hair, a small figure. An elderly woman, perhaps, holding up a bouquet. It's a bizarre collection of elements. It had to tell a story. All I had to do was work out what it was.