The Gallery
By
Mila Clarke
The gallery echoes guilt
Through closely guarded
Claustrophobic air.
The people shift…
Orderly, uninspired,
Dreaming analysis,
Impenetrable aspirations.
Paintings hanging
Gazing disapproval,
Some pompous
Some crushed
Others vain,
Too poor for their satisfaction.
I am judged with disdain,
Pierced by 400 year old cloth.
Few eyes still have light.
The Infanta Margerita,
Constrained from childhood,
Bound in azure finery,
The infant corseted;
A role unfit for the baby queen.
Contemptible commissions.
Expressionless, a mockery;
Art dissection;
A soul diced up and mashed.
Ordinary people framed,
Unnaturally comparable to
Anglers' prizes.
Shot down swan,
Pulled from the air
All in the name of a Duke's
Impression of an intellectual.
Wings cut away,
Freedom slashed away,
Swan song muted that day.
Liberty strapped to the back
Of the servant convict,
Called from his kitchen cage.
Idolise his common curls,
Lacquer them in lorals,
Feathers wilting at his
Broken yoked shoulders.
All the time I sit here
An oaken unknown bench,
Special to no one
Not fond in memories…
We are akin;
It is not found in memories,
No hearts scored in our backs,
All insults sanded from us.
Remember me sitting,
Find my bench a memory.
Recall my pounding steps,
Push through human boundaries,
Reverse my stationary flight -
I was sitting here to flee
But then running to no avail.
Escape is futile
Until I am cut loose from
The unwanted half of me,
The uncared for both of me,
The unloved one of me.
Why do the gifted few
Capture light to
Smother it in shadow?
Leave it lonely to be viewed?
They see the sparkles,
They notice the blacker tones,
Knowing not
The cold of darkness,
Forgetting forsaken
Warmth of day,
Passion of fire,
Movement, freedom, love
Imprisoned… all lost.
I am racing
Flying frozen, set on pause.
Ghastly grinning
Mask is fixed,
The weeping face
Behind is broken.
The gallery walls are grey,
Grim and clinical,
Conducting their morbid
Canvas autopsy.
The oils are faded
And 400 years have not cracked a smile,
Someone saw something
Worthy of their time,
Valuable, desire it to be preserved.
I am new,
I have not died,
I am not a patient of forensics,
Yet this is familiar;
Known to me are
Untold memoirs,
Unclaimed experiences
Have, in me, grown weary
One more slash,
Nothing valued enough,
No reason to be preserved,
I will be lost,
Severed from my cords,
Straggling and unworthy.
Leave the gallery.
Dodge columns of other sorts,
Of bronzing autumnal heroes;
In Spring they bounded forth,
In their Summer
The heroics of their lives
Were revelled and regaled,
Now their memories are
Paled in dying light.
I walk among the functional too,
Weaving through
Underground columns,
Climb aboard my ticket "Home";
The house where I reside.
I see galleries of another kind.
Still I am enclosed,
Still my guilt is heard to echo,
These paintings have cracked
But some slashes
Reveal ghost portraits
More beautiful, more delicate
Than any mask can fake.
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