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
