The Art Museums

High-piled like palaces or Parthenons,

Self-conscious and a little ill-at-ease

With their fraught calm and delusions

Of grandeur, they invite us Sundays

To evade ennui and inclement weather.

We dutifully leave our umbrellas and cameras behind

Like preconceived opinions, and encounter one another

Weaponless and Sunday-clothed, the mind

Open to any suggestion. The galleries

Receive us. We surprise the residents in all

Sorts of attitudes and gallantries.

Picasso's entrail-emblemed demoiselle-

Reflecting on her reflection agreeing yes

You look like hell-seems suddenly to comprehend

Her own shortcomings, and blushes

Garishly in blues and greens; while deep behind

The looking-glass lies Goya's delicious

Pear-fleshed duchess, peeled

To the quick, hugged hotly by her lover's brushes

(One wonders which of them is more revealed,

Which one excels in innocence).

The salt-cellar of Cellini

Sees its brilliant coruscations as the Renaissance

Itself, itself a tiny

Age; as does the complex mobile

Prehensiled on its cautious wire-

A whole age trembling in its awful

Balance. On these Sunday afternoons, we're

Slowly and insidiously discomposed.

The echoes of a painted rose

Unfold in distant Persias just

As effortlessly. And was

It Sunday last, the mists and drizzles

Bored us into sketching deer escaping

Rudimentary menaces on granite easels?

The stone's-throw of their frantic leaping

Whispers in our ears. Conversation ceases.

One can almost hear

The stir of silk pelisses

As Renoir's ladies brush their hair.