Dated 1432
and here I am
looking...
If the artist
could only look back
too,
me admiring...
Transfixed.
And amongst
a lavish soiree
a veritas bouquet
death and life
displayed and splayed
out-
hung crucified-
elaborated suffering, of the antiquity.
The lives
in the stills.
The (pro)posed lives
in the pastorals.
The captured chrysalis,
by stroke.
In wealthy company of all this
excessive impression
is-tic motif-
the money felt misplaced,
so it said subjectively.
And those people holding place
in the Portraiture room
-No Photographs-
needed.
the encounter is etched,
with abrasive stares-
over time.
On the walls
the writing of fates
in gilt frames
of a frozen time
of a minds eye
that was never there
but now,
while I am looking back
and there.
Image of painting by Cornelis Bisschop (not the one referenced in this poem) Allegory on the Raid at Chatham dated 1667 [Public domain, Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.
