ANNA Crowe ponders a family souvenir and the colourful train of thoughts it prompts.
She is a past winner of the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for poetry pamphlets, run by the National Library of Scotland. The morpho is a large tropical butterfly, the male of which has bright blue iridescent wings.
BUTTERFLIES
…No, more blue than that:
like tatters of the Morpho butterfly.
Elizabeth Bishop
My grandfather, a hard-up rating, brought
this picture, lurid souvenir of Rio,
home from the war: daubed with childish brio,
A Sugar Loaf on dark horizon caught
in crusted paint on glass. It seems the war
has got into the sunset, for red bleeds
all over the bay, so each wave wears
a stained feather, while palm trees lean and feed
on tainted dreams of Eldorado. Stare
at sky and ocean: when have you seen a blue
like this? Think azure silk; think angels' wings:
great Morphos that once fanned the tropic air
lie pressed in petalled rows; sad residue
of beauty among the dregs of family things.
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