Summer in the Gallery: Ekphrases I-IV

I. Bandage the Knife not the Wound

In the gallery everything is bleeding.
Tendrils unspool across the varnished floors.
Browning, fading plumes thicken the ceiling.

All the violence here is nearly silent.
We whisper it into the little signs,
the stairs, the drift of our gaze at the door.

Studiously, we clean the stains from the walls.
So you, eyes on the canvas as we slice,
Think it is silly of you to bleed to here.

I would truly love to dress your wound
But the knife has asked to be swaddled.
II. Art is Nice

Men who
Paint or
Draw or
Throw things
In strange
Places
Are most
Likely
Told well
Done you
Have made
A new
Lovely
Something.


Others
Can do
That too.
But they
Find more
Respect
Comfort
Money
If they
Use their
Art to 
Care for
Someone
Else.
III. To an Artist


Your art cares and buoys and cherishes. It
Springs like new leaves on a dying house plant.
It is nourishment at the tea-table.
Drink it as a tonic. Grind it for a salve.

It tends to the very many things you 
Love. Sideways gallery-walkers soften,
Uncoiling and unfurling so gently
In your certain, generous, steady hands.

I know your mind is scratched and raw and frantic.
I know you watch the ceiling crack in the dark.
 
And still you mould your familiar clay,
Its edges hopelessly soft and yielding.
Please, take up some sharp and heavy something, 
Shatter these pieces and burn the pointed shards.
IV. After Calvary 1998


Chapter house, Liverpool Cathedral
Christ hangs on the cross, comforted by the familiar Bedlington terrier.

Force-bred dog torn together
Slowly, years after nails were first
Slid between the bones in those thin wrists,
Unthinkable to Christ or the Christ-like
People who couched the same
Preoccupations heavy in their 
Sternums as h/He did.
He whose dogs were more like
Wolves, coyotes, dingoes, foxes, 
Would never have considered that
This dinosaur-helmet and
Those frizzy curls could belong
To the same creature that pulls at 
Meat outside the stables or scratches
In the sand for long and short bones.

But Aitchison
Named like a clarified pronunciation,
Comforted by his familiar Bedlington terrier,
Thought that Christ
Human that he was 
Might have been too
And, passing his own nails through 
Those wrists another time,
Extends the generosity of what he knew
To be the loveliest of things.

*****

Molly Stock-Duerdoth grew up in Brighton and now lives in Cambridge, UK, where she studies and works in museums and galleries. Her professional work and writing explores how and why we tell stories over time, to each other, and especially in the small moments. She has always written to understand things better.