Graham High
And Some Other God, Unfinished
'Self-portrait is it?' says a suited passer-by,
'nice Botticelli' adds this would-be passing suitor
as he steps over her - she makes him think of doggy
position; Victorian scullery girls scrubbing the floor.
The tempera of Venus's skin is the dust
of butterflies on the fingers of the girl
who draws her. Here for a day, her colours have
no binder, no permanence, no place to be
except the street. For this exposition
there is nothing between her and the city
but a thin green stripe of adhesive tape
marking out her pitch on the pavement.
Outside the steps of the National Gallery,
her copy is just a few meters, a security guard,
an institution, and several centuries away
from the real thing. And what she knows for sure
is that about art they were always wrong,
the punters and pundits, their myth of how the gift
of creativity protects the artist from life's struggles
and humiliations, like being behind glass.
So far only Venus is complete but there's
a sudden applause of thunder, and a rain cloud
spits a few dark coins across the naked pigment
of her day's work as she tries to cover up.
The chalk smudges and runs like mascara.
Page(s) 22
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