waterpainting

It isn't a painting,

it is image, which flicks flame

in the invisible, in the twist,

it isn't a painting, it is game

metamorphosis.

It isn't a painting,

it is photography.

O, let me have her

though on the rock's rapidity

I scatter.

It isn't a painting,

it is game and nothing,

which burns in bright scatter-shifts

and then, backwards, falling

is heard, dies and drifts.

(Adapted from the Jaroslav Seifert poem 'Obraz ve Vode' by Toby Litt and Virginia Little, 1991)