Painting with the Winds
What colour is the wind today, that Boreas shimmers from the north?
White and blue and shivery grey, ice and gentians on his breath to fan the ashes in my hearth.
Does Notus burnish southern winds to drift bright dreams through summer trees in opal shades of sea and sand, gilding with sunflower-tinted breeze the silver-fingered olive leaves?
Bleak Eurus' eastern palette's dark with gloomy greens as sour as bile since Poseidon, churlish, stuck his fork to churn the ocean's lurching swell into a surly, heaving pool.
Zephyrus, swaggering from the west — before whose rage leaf-armies fled — daubs flaming orange, autumn-dressed: Sienna browns and clashing reds spark bonfire music in my head.
Aeolus, ruler of the winds, can colour pictures with his voice, transform a rainbow into sound — old master of melody and pace he never paints the same tune twice.
Mary Sheepshanks THE SPECTATOR 17 February 2007 41
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