Paul Clark
On a portrait of William Blake by Francis Bacon
His neck is an upturned anvil
supporting the peeled boulder of his head.
Flesh, pink and grey-blue, washed
over his nerve-ends like infant sea-worms.
Primitive responses - touched and recoiled
from in a bruising that cuts through
self-awareness to pure pain, pure
reaction. As if he evolved from a spine
and telephone-cables of nerves were flushed
through with blue or yellow dye, exposed
ganglions and broken fuse-ends, and
evolution ended there. A museum-piece.
A machine-cleaned carcass flailing
at the suggestion of a touch.
Around him is black night, his neck
disappears, merges with it,
emerges from it with eyes closed,
great ears drawn to earth with lobes of lead.
The puttied gash of mouth sinks
down to two thumbprints at each edge.
So naked: oniony silver skin swelling
to trowelled-on grout around his shoulders,
beam of bone protruding through. Any
probing would induce a trauma.
This head has watched while something bled it white.
Now its eyes are closed behind cuttlefish lids.
Page(s) 51
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