Moira Clark
Invisible skin
(Antony Gormley Exhibition, Winchester 2004)
Is this what remains of our domain
when all living tissue,
every lub-dub of I am
has followed the last light
to the edge of shadow?
No Angel of the North likenesses
teeter here,
in this Great Hall
where kings and queens
present themselves
in roundels of colour.
Trying to stand as still
as Gormley’s matrices of metal,
I watch how light curves lines,
contours faces, hips, shoulders
and as I am turned,
like a dumbstruck
ventriloquist’s dummy, glance
my father’s unmistakeable stoop,
hear his shuffling
feet before
fading
to stone
and steel
and light.
when all living tissue,
every lub-dub of I am
has followed the last light
to the edge of shadow?
No Angel of the North likenesses
teeter here,
in this Great Hall
where kings and queens
present themselves
in roundels of colour.
Trying to stand as still
as Gormley’s matrices of metal,
I watch how light curves lines,
contours faces, hips, shoulders
and as I am turned,
like a dumbstruck
ventriloquist’s dummy, glance
my father’s unmistakeable stoop,
hear his shuffling
feet before
fading
to stone
and steel
and light.
Page(s) 46
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