In this Spinning World

 In every second Gallery in this Museum

                A student with an easel

Paintings copied in three-quarter scale --

                The tilted world, its plates of pears,

Boar hunts, ruined cities,

                Made smaller and still.

Here, a wedding portrait cast back into the dim

                Clockwork of a convex mirror.

Elsewhere, terrible celebrations, staged grief

                The held expression of duty.

Saint Sebastian tethered in a dark wood

                 Where owls once purled

Through a painter’s imagination.

                 A deathbed curtain lightly drawn.

                 All this stillness.

Outside: Paris. Slant bells that enter the hour,

                 A school yard of boys in blue sweaters.

                 Consider, here, the history

                 of the tableau:

How there was a time when mirrors were hung

                Too high to cast back our reflections.

How all we could see was the room

                 Of the childhood we stood in.

                 It isn’t the gods we are trying to please,

                 all this re-creation.

The frayed border of tapestry

                 Dropped as fettle to the floor

                 Cannot be resewn.

And what did it contain?

                 A boy no historian could name

Two splay-legged mongrels,

                 Thread in russet.

What sets one canvas apart from another

                 Is surprise --

The Virgin in the one painting

                Who does not know what the angel will say.

Yes, it’s true,

                 A man once took my face in his hands,

Tilted the shallow pool of it

                 Up

                               And did not kiss me.

And it’s said that in art the arrows

                Do not quiver.

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