Strindberg Paints the Waves
Beyond Kymmendö island
in the Stockholm archipelago, a cliff-hung
pine
colours the blank between cloud and water.
Chaos is the constant, the sharp aside,
infinity’s merest margin at the sky’s edge.
A violet snout rummages the lampblack of
waves.
The picture is finished – the buoy, the lighthouse,
these supplicant symbols always somehow less
than alchemy.
His habit of love betrayed, to twist
and wrong “three vain and vampire wives”–
Harriet, the last, on her wedding night,
uterus prolapsed – “I didn’t understand”, he
wrote,
“but took her anyway… twice,
with some distaste.”
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