Saturday, January 26, 2008

Orange givré

Little is lovely that is orange -
Road cones, billboards, indicator lights -
Except, of course, oranges. And flames,
And today's sunrise, frosted, ravishing,
Raising to smoke the face of the waters.

13 comments:

Zhoen said...

Orange is lovely, real orange. Human imitation orange rings false and ugly.

Anonymous said...

And nothing rhymes with it. Not even orange juice, which is yellow.

I like orange. It goes good with grey, both at Via Neg and in the sidebar of qarrtsiluni.

Lucy said...

I'm inclined to agree in general,Zhoen. That was what I found when I started to look out for orange this morning.
But then I had forgotten about Via Neg and qarrtsiluni, which are of course both lovely. There is a mountain in South Wales called the Blorenge, which is commonly pronounced to rhyme with orange. However, I don't think it is the correct pronunciation, but used humoristically (as we say here in France)to supply the English language's missing rhyme for the fruit and colour.

Anonymous said...

This is great, Lucy. What a mellifluous first line & what, only two lines later, a beautiful closing pair. Delightful.

Pam said...

Lovely! And yes, great first line. I really don't like orange - except, as you say, in oranges and sunsets.

I can't believe you have daffodils out already! How cheering. Spring! Here, we have a few crocuses, which I keep meaning to photograph and post as a slight change from cats.

Bob's Blog said...

And don't forget the orange and blue Colorado sunsets, named after the football team, the Broncos. Bronco Orange.

Unknown said...

Beautifully and succinctly put. The thought and the actuality of frosted orange contains a hint of paradox.

Fire Bird said...

for some reason I rather like indicator lights - at night, glowing, flashing...

tristan said...

thanx, that is lovely ... although any contemporary painter who is willing to pay the price will tell you that liquitex's cadmium orange is the exception to the rule ... not that it is at all environmentally friendly, toxic pigment torn from the earth by industrial chemists as opposed to dye-based colouring distilled from petrochemicals by industrial chemists ... la-de-dah, fiddle-de-dee, 'twas ever thus !

leslee said...

Lovely poem! I've never been fond of the color orange, except as an accent with some other color. But, as you say, in nature there are some wonderful oranges, particularly the fruit itself.

julie said...

Beautiful poem, Lucy. I wonder why humans (in general) perceive orange that way? I was just thinking this morning that there aren't a whole lot of yellows that people really like either (outside of daffodils and sunshine, anyway). We tend to prefer blues and greens and reds and purples, but yellow and especially orange are so rarely anyone's favorite.

Lucy said...

Well what a response to orange!

My start on a Saturday is slightly later than usual, and took in sunrise at the fishing pond, with the mist rising, rather than pre-dawn as it is during the week. It was very frosty out but quite dangerously beautiful, as I had to concentrate hard on driving carefully rather than gazing and gazing. I had the cheapcam, but as well as camera shake in the low-light, it only showed up dirty pink and blue and yellow.

Bob - you named your sunsets after your football team?!

Plutarch - orange givre is a dessert favoured by Chinese restaurants especially hereabouts; a real orange, its inside scooped out and turned into sorbet, and the intact skin refilled with this. It is always much too cold and hard, cold enough to burn the tongue.

TG - indicator lights can be rather jolly; they often remind me of those old greyscale, colour-accented pictures in the Highway Code illustrating their use... Thanks too for getting me onto looking out for colours, though I didn't think to do it until after seeing the sunrise.

Tristan - that made me think of that gorgeous picture by, is it Lord Leighton? (or Alma Tadema? I think you might be just the man to tell me...)of a woman reclining in a semi-curled position in floaty chiffony robe of the most fabulous cadmium orange; she takes up all the frame, and there's a hell of a lot of orange. I could live with that picture I think.

Leslee - yes, little accents of it are OK, which is what Dave's got at V.N. But oranges themselves, and all their little cousins, are lovely.

Julie - yes, yellow's quite difficult too, though it goes in and out of fashion, not many complexions can take it. But quite a few foods are in the yellow/orange range, and are quite appetizing. Blueish foods are rare, of course, but blue is good to eat from...

Does anybody read these great long replies I write?

Sheila said...

I often read your replies, and always your replies to my comments. :-)

I've actually been planning a post on the horror of fake yellows that are very popular now in the marketing world, it seems.

Nature does it best.