Figures in a Landscape

Everywhere a new mastery meets the eye.
From the underglaze of miniature blue
there flames away the first message strokes
of an achievement still caught in a view.
Here wisps cross-hatch and streak
the cloud seas of stipple islands.
Rubens in his sweetest joy never glided
this grain textured sky of river-sands.

Against the cut-out hills
—that are themselves dramatically back-lit,
the sea, as in a map, completely fills
the closing coast to surpass itself
in reflected roofing for all mankind.
The breeze swathes all around with a finer skin
Is this luminous perfection the child's find
in the Madonna's eyes?