0075 The Connoisseur

Do come in. I’m so glad that you came – it’s good to have someone to share one’s pleasures and delights with. Some of my family think I’m some sort of misanthrope, hiding away with my collection of Chinese porcelain… I tell them, it’s the opposite – I feel that I’m in touch with the finest work of contented men, creating some sort of memory of perfection, for others to enjoy – I guess you feel the same way about those poems you write? Now – your hands are clean? Not because of this celadon Sung vase, let’s start with that – but I’d like you to feel the outer layer of skin on your fingertips touching the surface of the vase and yet not quite touching, feeling the air between – silk on silk, almost – I was going to say, the skin of a young girl’s cheek greeting another young girl’s cheek, but that wouldn’t sound quite right – you must have the same problems, with choosing just the right similes and metaphors, that are thrilling without being ‘clever’? I don’t want to be pretentious about all this – just feel the surface: not matt, not shiny, the colour not bright, not blatant, but not in hiding – and see how the potter takes the vase’s curves and contours from neck to belly, like a yacht, like a horseman, like a lover – put this vase in a room to itself and its stillness fills the room with presence… they talk a lot of nonsense about connoisseurship – it’s just loving what is fine, and long reflected over, and as human an activity as can be. You meet the maker in the art. And yes, there are other connoisseurs who love the roughness of a cracked, irregular Japanese tea-cup, a one-off from a woodman’s kiln… I expect you feel just the same about poetry? How fortunate we are, you and I..