Art

I remember when we went to the Louvre.

Strolling down a long hallway of Italian Renaissance.

Here was a viewer viewing.

There was a person looking with wonder.

Here a person, there a painting

Here a painting, there a person

Here and there along

the hallway.

Interesting.

Arriving at the end,

we entered a large room.

Over on the other side of the room:

maybe a hundred people

looking at one painting.

Go figure.

Mona Someone.

That's art for ya.



I read something the other day,

whether 'tis true or not I cannot say.

When the British were pulling out of India

they were upset, and they had gone

daft.

Some potentate gave the order to

destroy a sacred building, you know,

like blow it up. But

at the last minute, the Viceroy issued an order:

Don't do it.

So they didn't.

Tajma somethingorother.

That's art for ya.



Then there was the time some Brit

archeologist or whatever he was, took possession of

a Greek statue, a lovely lady she was,

or had been, back in the day.

Well this caryatid lady had five sisters

back in Athens, and she really

missed her sisters, so the Greeks tried to get her

back from the British Museum where she has been

imprisoned all these years, and still is but

The Brits won't let her go,

a captive Carytid.

That's art for ya.



Streamin' through some flix

on the Net

I stumbled upon a story about a

Woman in gold.

A precious portrait of this lady

was stolen by the Nazis when they were taking were over

the world, or so they thought,

and they had the pic hidden for a long long time but then

it was found.

The Nazis didn't own it any more, but a museum did and

they were not inclined to

give it back to

the rightful heirs.

But then a judge in America got it back for the family.

So the Woman in Gold came home,

'though it was not the home she had known; it was

a new home. She had never been there. May she rest in

peace.

That's art for ya.



The men come; the women go,

looking for another Michelangelo.

That's art for ya.



When I was young man, and I didn't

know much about anything

there was a fella who made a big pic of a

Campbell's soup can and

they called it. . .well

that's art for ya.



And somewhere in my memory there's cave art,

that I learned about in school or somewhere

where they found these caves in France.

Neanderthals or somebody kin to them had painted

these animals on the cave walls.

I guess this impulse has been with us for a long long

time.

That's art for ya.





This morning I wandered lonely as a cloud

into a little gallery, to see

pictures at an exhibition,

as it were.

I saw a photograph:

a wooden dock upon a calm pond

with large polka dots painted on the little pier

in an orderly way. Beneath the the image was

another photograph; this time one of a

a similar boardwalk with the same

large polka dots on the boards,

extended not upon a watery pond, but

out upon a desert scene,

like, no water in between

or underneath.

How clever these spots seem.

Well I just had to laugh;

I saw a photograph.

That's art for ya.



Now as I was saying before.

So there we were at the Louvre and

we were strolling around a big room where

Marie de Medici had commissioned--or maybe it was Catherine--

some special painting to be done.

It just so happened that I glanced

up at the ceiling and

there I noticed a big clump of pink flowers--or maybe they were mauve--

painted in the middle of

a blue sky background.

Then my eye wandered across the sky blue to behold

a muscular black man extending his hand down

to me.

Who me?

He was smiling.

As if to say. . . come on up. It's okay. Your time has come.

And as I took in the rest of that ceiling scene there were other people

around him. Upon closer inspection I discovered they were, like,

baby angels, and so I suddenly realized

I was at my funeral.

Someone had thrown a pink bouquet on me.

Or maybe it was mauve. And the smiling man was offering me

a hand up.

So shall it be for me, someday, as it was for Marie.

That's art for ya.



Glass Chimera