1. SCENES OF COMMON LIFE
Amsterdam
With drunken smiles and apple cheeks,
In wide-brimmed hats and ruffs bleached white,
The ancient burghers all concur:
Be rich and of good appetite!-
Advice that these museum-goers
Attend with faces carved from granite,
As though these old Dutch businessmen
Were creatures from another planet
And not the patterns upon which
Their genes were fashioned stitch by stitch.
2. AMONG THE EARLIER GERMAN PAINTERS
Hanover and Munich
Brute rage and cruelty have here full rein,
Where Christs are pierced and whipped and steeped in pain
And endless holy martyrs feel the thrust
Of voyeurism’s disembodied lust.
Such (we later viewers apprehend)
Is every felon’s destined end
Who raises challenge to the Church or State,
And would have been Herr Martin Luther’s fate:
A hint that many of today’s Bavarians
So heeded they became themselves barbarians
In zesty, zealous imitation of
The blows and bludgeons of the Lord God’s love
And now, as henchmen, share immortal blame
For what the German Church and State became.
3. SAAL X
Vienna
Two lions menace us just halfway up
The stairs, where Theseus prepares to club
A centaur: we’re entering the realm
Of art and must beware. Here even apples
In the hands of Flemish Eves may pose a threat,
And hell spawns demons right and left. There’s worse
To come, and yet with what a cool aplomb
The noble rich who share these rooms look on,
Their eyes fast fixed upon their portraitists.
The worst atrocities are in Saal X:
No Spanish martyrdoms, no flayed Marsyas,
No writhings of the buxom damned, but life
As Pieter Breughel saw it, calm as any
Prince hung on these walls, and not without a sense
Of fun. He’d have enjoyed the constant zaps
Of buzzers triggered by the mesmerized
Museum visitors as they trespass
Beyond the boundaries set by velvet ropes
To grimace at his grim particulars.
Leave a Reply