Poem: Seduction
This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Colleen Keating
looks at one of the masterpieces of modern art.
Mar 13, 2025, updated Mar 13, 2025
Seduction
bathers in naked strokes of light
pose
unburdened
I hear saplings crack in their play
and laughter as they lounge
in lusty rhythms of flesh
against blue –
Cezanne’s illusion of reality
here loss… blur of grief
is an enigma
free with the bathers
caught in beauty
immersed
in their unfinished form
suspended from meaning
escape for the day
I linger sheltered
under his chestnut tree
The Bathers, Les Grandes Baigneuses, Paul Cézanne
Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet who has published four collections of poetry, including The Dinner Party: A poetic response, and two award-winning verse novels in Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey and Olive Muriel Pink: her radical and idealistic life. Her new poetry collection Ring With the Bells, is due in mid-2025. Her books are available through Adelaide’s Ginninderra Press.
Editor’s note: readers may like to refresh themselves regarding the story of Cézanne’s painting The Large Bathers, considered one of the masterpieces of modern art, that was still unfinished after seven years at his time of death. Then there are his multiple works of chestnut trees, based on those of the Cézanne family estate in Aix-en-Provence.