Landscape by Moonlight by Loredana Podolska-Kint

(After the painting by Rubens in the Courtauld Gallery)

Give me a landscape by moonlight —

nay! Give me a thousand, this very day,

in a thunder of pigment, I’d burst in its way,

for I am weary of treading the city,

its grit and spittle and solid beauty,

gorse vehicles grumbling their busy ditties,

give me the light-footed uncertainty

of moonbeams reflected, and young galaxies

with their choreographed spontaneity,

give me treetops with softness of moss,

flax-filled ledges with fullness of floss,

a drowsy stream only eel-children cross.

My London’s uncannily gravel today;

I float where I must, scuff my soles if I may;

the moonbeams are false in the floodlights, they say,

but the streams by my home wait alone in the rays.