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| Paula Rego Bride 1994 pastel on paper Tate Gallery |
Song
Make and be eaten, the poet says,
Lie in the arms of nightlong fire,
To celebrate the waking, wake.
Burn in the daylong light; and praise
Even the mother unappeased,
Even the fathers of desire.
Blind go the days, but joy will see
Agreements of music; they will wind
The shaking of your dance; no more
Will the ambiguous arm-waves spell
Confusion of the blessing given.
Only and finally declare
Among the purest shapes of grace
The waking of the face of fire,
The body of waking and the skill
To make your body such a shape
That all the eyes of hope shall stare.
That all the cries of fear shall know,
Staring in their bird-pierced song;
Lines of such penetration make
That shall bind our loves at last.
Then from the mountains of the lost,
All the fantasies shall wake,
Strong and real and speaking turn
Wherever flickers your unreal.
And my strong ghosts shall fade and pass
My love start fiery as grass
Wherever burn my fantasies,
Wherever burn my fantasies.
– Muriel Rukeyser (1955)
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| Elisabeth Frink Small Running Man ca. 1986 plaster Tate Gallery |
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| Stephen McKenna An English Oak Tree 1981 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Lucian Freud Two Plants 1977-80 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Gerhard Richter Elizabeth I 1966 lithograph Tate Gallery |
Elizabeth II
In today's correspondence a poetry book
detailing the lives of British Queens –
with a note enclosed and a question:
what does it mean to be a Queen?
I could reply and say –
this precious stone set in a silver sea:
a symbol, like a banner, for men's love.
But these are not my words.
I could reply and say –
glorying in the glories of my people,
sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest.
But these are not my words.
I could declare –
that each Queen is tissue paper thin,
translucent but combined, are my flesh.
But I will not solidify my words,
instead I will command my secretary to write,
with many kind thanks for the little book, etc,
but to say my thoughts on Queenship
can only be ascertained by my actions.
– Ruth Stacey (2015)
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| James Rosenquist Silo 1963-64 oil on canvas, wood, perspex Tate Gallery |
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| John Wells Profiles 1949 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
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| Henry Moore Four-Piece Composition: Reclining Figure 1934 alabaster Tate Gallery |
Henry Moore in the Garden
The hard wrought face
of time and human life
that yields to no insolvent poking eye
but is shaped, like infants
by act and season of love –
I came on this stolen wisdom, Henry Moore
from your deaf mute
stretched on the earth like Zeus or Christ,
corpse, claimant, porter to hell
couchant on the earth's shield.
When I took his head in my hands
it cracked like an egg, man's touchstone.
The bones shuddered and stilled. He had been lodging
patient as Job's diary
ravens, ambergris, wandering Jews, the deluge.
He spat out Buddha's tooth.
Question that mouth? shout at those ears?
They are not fountain spouts.
They are typography. Period.
The egg of the universe
bakes here.
– Daniel Berrigan (1964)
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| Fernand Léger Keys (Composition) 1928 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Fernand Léger Playing Card and Pipe 1928 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Fernand Léger Leaves and Shell 1927 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| André Dunoyer de Segonzac Nude with a Newspaper 1921 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Piet Mondrian No. VI / Composition No. II 1920 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
The Mondrian
Like a clear, concise thought,
Lord of its area, king of its realm,
It steadies the room,
Bold as a Spanish noon, its salt
Light dazzles us. Subtle as decibels,
It is beyond us. Succinct as seed,
Its possibilities yield
To none. Outside its stupendous windows whirl
Comets and galaxies in a white riot.
Beyond imagining, its vistas stretch, immaculate
Of anxiety or haste,
Disciplined to the value of understatement.
In such ordered tumult, in such a plain
Of sense, the insistent distraction
Of one small black stone
Would enflame whole Arabias of diligent saints;
In such gargantuan cold, a bee's loud
Prayerwheel would hum a thousand disciples
to its honeyed spoils.
Mathematical and precise, its measured world
Nevertheless is queered by unknown quantities:
How little of its scant indigo it would take
To gaud the peacock parks
Of a Ramayana. It is a lesson in taste
And quantitative analysis. Like chemistry,
We never quite understand it; it exists
Beyond our local wits.
But there is an impact and honesty we cannot deny.
Its lucidity is habitual with the Dutch.
Drenched with Vermeer's refraction, implicate
With all Rembrandt's devout
Devices, it too reveals the less-than-conscious search,
The wounds and vanities of its viewers:
It too speaks out, without circumspection
Or sport, of what must be borne,
Or lacks shame, of what pleases, and what hurts.
– Marvin Solomon (1955)
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| Jacob Epstein Mrs Emily Chadbourne 1910 alabaster Tate Gallery |
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)