A POSTCARD TO CLIVE JAMES
2008
This being the National Gallery –
the
jewel in the heart of London
at
the centre of an extinct empire
(too
early to stand on a broken arch
of
London Bridge – in Arizona now -
to
sketch the ruins of St. Paul's) –
the
scruffy colonial doesn’t pay to enter
with
obols or his soul, but the innocence
of
eyes fed with photographs on screens.
Tourists
moving thrombotic in clots
get
in the way of masters.
Lovers
linger
near
the Rembrandts - a wall of flesh
that
leaves you awkwardly wondering
what
to do with your hands.
Fobbing
off Elizabethans and Victorians
with
their lace, their sternly sentimental
knobbly
physiognomies, the lapsed
antipodean
student of art history
makes
his way to what he’s come to see;
what
he has only seen before in books
and
slides shown in the intimacy
of
darkened lecture theatres.
First
the feast: Titian!
Bacchus
leaps
from
his chariot, streaming rose
against
vividly azure Mediterranean sky.
Draperies
spill and belly like boiling water
and
there, turning, clearly surprised,
but
unperturbed by the glorious god,
his
raucous retinue of maenads, satyrs,
and
leopards, is Ariadne.
The fire of
ambrosia
in
the wine, the starry crown
of
immortality above, surely will soothe
the
smart of abandonment.
The
only way to marry up from Theseus
is
a slot in Real Housewives of Olympus.
Now
the palette cleanser: Piero… Oh!
Christ
– the closest this agnostic
atheist
will come to Damascene epiphany –
like
a young poplar…
A Parian column…
No…
A
perfect shaft of light like a Newman zip,
grounded
in the Jordan, anchoring heaven
to
earth; the still and quiet centre
of
an Arno-cum-Holy Land that looks
so
much like Central Otago I could cry.
Sweet
Jesus!
Never with such hunger
or
tenderness, have I ever looked
at
a lover.
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