Poem of the month

SIMON CURTIS

William Payne

In Plymouth City Gallery,
One Christmas Eve, all rain,
I saw a retrospective
Of painter ‘Payne’s Grey’ Payne,
Whose name will mean forever
That earthy, darkish hue
He mixed from yellow ochre,
Lake and Prussian blue.
More dense than Indian ink,
Those Payne’s grey washes made
The middle distance deeper,
With shade that looked like shade,
In picturesque topography
And local landscape view,
Like Mutton Cove or Pengersick,
Or Stonehouse Hill or Looe.
From the swan baptised as Bewick’s,
Via Banks’s Banksia rose
To Canon Greenwell’s Glory,
Payne stands foursquare with those
Whose names fused with the language
And still survive today:
A waterfowl; a flower;
A dry-fly – and a grey.
Eponymously genial,
They were creators who
Described the nondescript
If small-scale, no less new;
Extending our awareness,
Enriching the mundane –
Like a wet-through day enhanced
Through meeting William Payne.