Letter to Donald Locke

   by David Chorlton

Dear Donald, When we talked again by phone after such
a long time, it felt like completing sentences
begun twenty years back
as we turned to Cezanne and you asked
What did he see, what did Cezanne see?  as if more
than art depended on it. We have a few of his paintings
and four drawings at the museum here, close enough
for me to visit for a few more weeks, and I just came
from staring at them. He saw
trees leaning toward the paper’s edge
trying to find their place, and he saw empty space
as his closest ally in the quest
for balance. In the pencil strokes and sparse
brushwork on a white sheet you can feel
the waiting it took to decide what came next.
Such nervous patience took years
to control. If ever two dimensions had a servant
it was Cezanne, for whom the edges
of a canvas were the law. We ask
what he saw, because so much is withheld
and we can never know what was omitted to make
space for the mountain. His restraint
is what stays with me most. All the more in our age
of special effects and gimmicks like covering a river
and calling it art. And the subtle tension
in the moment he stopped painting
is still thrilling. There’s a still life with a white cloth
whose folds dissolve without completion
and it rests quietly against a grey
that won’t reveal what it was, but the lost edges
are the ones that hold attention. As I looked at it
I heard Cezanne’s footsteps backing away
the moment he knew there was nothing
to add. There was a red step
and a blue one, then the click
the door made. What did he see? Was it order? Was it
that nothing in nature exists in isolation? Or is the question
What did he know? and the answer: Whatever you see you must
make it into what it needs to be.