The Yellow Room, by Diane Fahey

The Yellow Room   

It will forever be 
October, twenty-eighteen,
in this corner of my house

where a hung calendar displays
The Chinese Screen by Margaret Olley,
set in her heaven-on-earth living room

with a doorway into a further room,
blue-walled, below its window,
steeped in silver, a figured jar.  

In the near room, an offstage 
window offers its broad 
slant on things, emblazons

the ochre-and-gold at the screen's centre,
falls on a flank of yellow wall,
the daybed's vined, flowered coverlet

and, with only one cup, the coffee set,
its grooved whiteness
a provocation to shadow.

How many times, over the many years
was this yellow room 
conjured through paint, to become

witness and archive of
a life lived in art,
and of the life of art itself: 

here, the headlong anarchic whirl 
of Matisse's round of dancers   
counterbalancing   

the inturned calm, the storied   
mystery, of the Chinese screen
with its pavilions, its robed figures

and a beyond of islands
on a blackly shining sea.
When evening comes 

the room, no longer captive 
to sliding shadows,
knows the solace of music –  

its geometric airiness,
its aqueous flare-and-shimmer.
Then, humdrum pleasures,

and the sustenance, ease  
that enable the long moment of
a whole life.

Soon enough, sleep's erasures,
the neon shock of dreams,
whatever kind of rest is given

until first light reaches in 
to place its touch upon
the things darkness saves for us.

Diane Fahey

This poem was long listed for the Peter Porter International Poetry Prize in 2019. It is from Diane's forthcoming poetry collection, The Glass Flowers.

Diane Fahey is the author of thirteen poetry collections, November Journal the most recent. She has won major poetry awards, and has received literary grants from the Australia Council. Her poetry has been represented in over seventy anthologies. Diane holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UWS. dianefaheypoet.com