Canon

A room full of saints, in the Spanish style,

Violent drama

From quiet to whisper loud.

They never meet your eyes.

Ashamed

Caught on canvas doing things.

Things they never did

All marked in heart's-blood

Sympathetic magic

From their heart to mine

A long line of carmine

Passing the eye, the mind, the word

Clawing at the under-soul

The heaving breathy bellows

With ten thousand flensing knives.

An image, a snapshot

In salvation history

Tarted up with royal Photoshop

Here a tear, there an attribute

Every artifact tilted

Every illumination falsified.

Ah, my love, let us be true to one another,

Said the forger to his brush.

Portraiture

A man is playing Spanish guitar

In the lounge of the gallery.

An old man is sketching, with power,

With hands years younger

His eye dances back

From his object to image

He rubs his nose, irritated

That he is still made of flesh.

A couple: older, monkish

Watch the historical display scroll by

Curious

Recovering

From beauty.

Voices echo from the foyer

A flock of school children, leaving

Having passed through once

Pausing at each point

And leaving

Some corner of their eye

Trailing behind.

The guitarist pauses

Begins with a fresh guitar

Tuning

To make it new again.

On the floor above, the paintings hang.

One hundred melodies

From one instrument

Carved by one hundred songs.

On the floor above, the paintings wait

For a stray heart, a careless eye

Ready to be devoured

By the heart and eye

Of Spain.

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Will be posting some poetry written while at the Prado exhibition currently at the Queensland Art Gallery.