Books - Vermeer's Corner

FROM THE BOOK:
MILKMAID
The Milkmaid - c.1658 - 60

I was going to do this in an accent
west country English
lots of ooz and arrz as burred
as sharp as blackberry thorns
or night cooled cider from a clay jug
all pickled pronouns and liberties
taken with doing words

dressed like a gert blue tit I be
what d'you wanna be painting I fer
down 'ere with me serving bits
and pieces etcetera

but anyway I am Dutch and
you said you want to do me
with more dignity
there is grace in that simple
quiet act of pouring milk you said
strength in the straight white fall
and angle of my concentration

that makes me feel special
like a priest preparing communion
milk the wine
sincere food of devout thought
bread in a basket bread broken
rough-chin crusts snagging morning light
like chickens shaking rain

and you made this simple room
with its cool harvest tang
with its basket pail foot-warmer
nail-hooks and holes look special
the wall lit as a gargantuan pearl
I wrote it down somewhere yes

opalescent you called it
even painted a thin milk line
down my head and back said

Burchell has an eye for detail, and evidences both an imaginative capacity to extrapolate from the painted image to the 'life' in ways that go beyond anything the paintings explicitly tell us…

Glyn Pursglove Reviews Editor for Acumen Magazine--Acumen 62