“Still Looking” (portrait of Herve Mommeja-Marin; St. Guilhem-le-Désert; Languedoc-Rousillon)
Pencil, pastel, & watercolor
2024 (NFS)
I’ve wanted to do this for a long while (certainly since Herve died), and I finally did so. It’s from the days (and there were many of them, over the years…which is rare, I realize) when everything, so to speak, was just……happy. Well……at least during those times when, having left our responsibilities in this country, we flew on aeroplanes to France, dutifully did our rounds with Herve’s RELENTLESS family there……and then just fled South for an extra week or two, where no one could find or even telephone us for at least 10 days. I’ve had, of course, many happy days in my life….but those remain among the most purely joyful and contented.
In regard to this painting and the accompanying song (see the link), I also recall when I first played the inimitable June Tabor’s recording of “Roses of Picardy”. Herve knew of it only through his grandfather’s (who’d survived the concentration camps during WWII, while his wife remained behind) singing it to his grandmother (in French, mais bien sur). I explained to him that it was, originally, a British song from 1916…..another war, another love, a different language………..but the same song.
Go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoNo_fQ68KE
The lyrics (French and English) are below:
“Dire que cet air nous semblait vieillot,
Aujourd’hui il me semble nouveau,
Et puis surtout c’était toi et moi,
Ces deux mots ne vieillissent pas.
Souviens-toi ça parlait de la Picardie,
Et des roses qu’on trouve là-bas,
Tous les deux amoureux nous avons dansé
Sur les roses de ce temps-là.”
“She is watching by the poplars, Colinette with the sea-blue eyes, She is watching and longing and waiting Where the long white roadway lies.
And a song stirs in the silence, As the wind in the boughs above,
She listens and starts and trembles, ‘Tis the first little song of love….
Roses are shining in Picardy, in the hush of the silver dew,
Roses are flowering in Picardy, but there’s never a rose like you!
And the roses will die with the summertime, and our roads may be far apart,
But there’s one rose that dies not in Picardy!
’tis the rose that I keep in my heart!
And the years fly on for ever, Till the shadows veil their skies,
But he loves to hold her little hands, And look in her sea-blue eyes.
And she sees the road by the poplars, Where they met in the bygone years,
For the first little song of the roses is the last song that she hears”
