A painting of a kitchen; a black cloud in the air; the words that form it

A (light, quiet, fruitful) ekphrastic poem by Lena Moses-Schmitt, prompted by Cézanne’s “Still Life with Apples” (1898) (cylinder, cone, sphere).

“Here is a question we all must ask: /
if we found ourselves below /
a London underpass on some sunlit /
morning or bright late afternoon /
in the decade after the war”