A friend, a follower of Jung,

dropped in to see me at the Studio.

Met Bill. Jung, she said,

 like his name, such a young spirit.

Not like Freud the senex.

Bill’s eyes lit with mischief:

Freud was the first, the opener,

the explorer. Young.

Old Jung walked after, in his footprints.

She conceded, had to.

And off he went.

I liked that, she grinned.

Now, our Old Man is dead.

He died so young.

Light of heart he was, delighting

in contention (but not a locked-

together heave-and-grunt; for blesséd

are the nimble, and the quick

of wit; they shall escape

pomposity) – he loved

colour that breathed light, and yet

flickered in substantial paint.

                                *

He was not one man alone,

had generated a field of force

that drew in others; and the centre:

the work – the company

there to serve their work.

Labels, stations, diagnoses

were left outside. Therapy,

he said, works best when what is done

aspires to be the best art.

More than once one of the group

exploded out of that charged orbit –

yet, white-hot, radiating

accusation, the fragment still

contained that eye, maintained

that commitment to the work.

                                *

Bill had known Cake Manson, playwright –

who once, in drink, climbed right up

(he’d done his share of mountaineering)

the outside of the high Victorian City Hall.

Cake once told us: Mothers would say

of a big bike, It’s dangerous.

You could get killed on it.

But then, a young biker might say,

That’s the point of a big bike,

To ride it fast, and look on death,

And know that life is fragile, precious.

Cake’s bike, on the way home one night

to his out-of-town house, his wife and child,

took him out

with a bang

against a truck.

Though he was not a Christian... I wrote.

A friend took me aside, took issue.

Cake was of that earthy line

that ran through Chaucer, Yeats.

No disembodied spirit, he –

only resurrection of the body

would answer for him.

                                *

Though not one who drove to try

the limits of our fragile tideline,

Bill was kin to him – a reckless

generosity, a sharing

of himself,

his gifts.

And his big work reflected that –

paint spilled by the bucketful,

raw stuff, stained, puddle, crusted;

he plunged deep into matter, sensation,

substance – but left it radiant,

steeped in light.

He, too, was of an ancient line:

Titian perhaps; Cezanne, he’d claim –

that shrinking, dogged man, as still

as a lizard on a rock, pursuing

the sun’s baking the bones of rock

beneath a stone-blue sky; or, indoors,

painting apples, singly, in bowlfuls,

stalking the appleness of apples.

By stubborn instinct Cezanne shunned

allegory, shunned meaning outside, beyond;

he turned from the finger pointing up

to apple pie in the sky, and reached –

though yes, he knew the flaming sword

barring the gate – for the solid, juicy

apple on the tree.

 <%

for Bill Ainslie

A friend, a follower of Jung,

dropped in to see me at the Studio.

Met Bill. Jung, she said,

 like his name, such a young spirit.

Not like Freud the senex.

Bill’s eyes lit with mischief:

Freud was the first, the opener,

the explorer. Young.

Old Jung walked after, in his footprints.

She conceded, had to.

And off he went.

I liked that, she grinned.

Now, our Old Man is dead.

He died so young.

Light of heart he was, delighting

in contention (but not a locked-

together heave-and-grunt; for blesséd

are the nimble, and the quick

of wit; they shall escape

pomposity) – he loved

colour that breathed light, and yet

flickered in substantial paint.

                                *

He was not one man alone,

had generated a field of force

that drew in others; and the centre:

the work – the company

there to serve their work.

Labels, stations, diagnoses

were left outside. Therapy,

he said, works best when what is done

aspires to be the best art.

More than once one of the group

exploded out of that charged orbit –

yet, white-hot, radiating

accusation, the fragment still

contained that eye, maintained

that commitment to the work.

                                *

Bill had known Cake Manson, playwright –

who once, in drink, climbed right up

(he’d done his share of mountaineering)

the outside of the high Victorian City Hall.

Cake once told us: Mothers would say

of a big bike, It’s dangerous.

You could get killed on it.

But then, a young biker might say,

That’s the point of a big bike,

To ride it fast, and look on death,

And know that life is fragile, precious.

Cake’s bike, on the way home one night

to his out-of-town house, his wife and child,

took him out

with a bang

against a truck.

Though he was not a Christian... I wrote.

A friend took me aside, took issue.

Cake was of that earthy line

that ran through Chaucer, Yeats.

No disembodied spirit, he –

only resurrection of the body

would answer for him.

                                *

Though not one who drove to try

the limits of our fragile tideline,

Bill was kin to him – a reckless

generosity, a sharing

of himself,

his gifts.

And his big work reflected that –

paint spilled by the bucketful,

raw stuff, stained, puddle, crusted;

he plunged deep into matter, sensation,

substance – but left it radiant,

steeped in light.

He, too, was of an ancient line:

Titian perhaps; Cezanne, he’d claim –

that shrinking, dogged man, as still

as a lizard on a rock, pursuing

the sun’s baking the bones of rock

beneath a stone-blue sky; or, indoors,

painting apples, singly, in bowlfuls,

stalking the appleness of apples.

By stubborn instinct Cezanne shunned

allegory, shunned meaning outside, beyond;

he turned from the finger pointing up

to apple pie in the sky, and reached –

though yes, he knew the flaming sword

barring the gate – for the solid, juicy

apple on the tree.

 <%