Stephen Wilson
Conservation Studio: Hermitage 
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Stephen Wilson reading Conservation Studio: Hermitage 
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I’m wearing my fur hat like a patriarch’s
klobuk, as if it conferred the privilege
of entering the museum by a side door.
Igor Borisovich lets us in. He’s Leo Tolstoy,
he’s a dancing bear, Russian as an iconostasis
from Novgorod, or the Church on Spilled Blood.
We’ve climbed to an attic overlooking the Neva
and you ask if your handbag will be safe
on the floor. He says, We leave Leonardos there.
Who’d ever know it’s a Madonna on his easel?
She’s like a tinted window in a stretch-limo,
or slice of toast covered in Marmite.
Peeled off her bed of oak during the dark ages
and laid on canvas, like a sliver of skin
grafted to a burn or logo on a t-shirt.
It was the sturgeon’s air-bladders
that stuck her down, soaked in water,
blended with honey and squeezed to a pulp,
then warmed, like a delicacy taken
at the Mariinskiy between acts.
Note the properties of whitefish glue, he says,
that make it a perfect icon for our State – plastic
like perestroika, yet strong as the Kremlin wall,
and good at penetrating into small crevices.
klobuk, as if it conferred the privilege
of entering the museum by a side door.
Igor Borisovich lets us in. He’s Leo Tolstoy,
he’s a dancing bear, Russian as an iconostasis
from Novgorod, or the Church on Spilled Blood.
We’ve climbed to an attic overlooking the Neva
and you ask if your handbag will be safe
on the floor. He says, We leave Leonardos there.
Who’d ever know it’s a Madonna on his easel?
She’s like a tinted window in a stretch-limo,
or slice of toast covered in Marmite.
Peeled off her bed of oak during the dark ages
and laid on canvas, like a sliver of skin
grafted to a burn or logo on a t-shirt.
It was the sturgeon’s air-bladders
that stuck her down, soaked in water,
blended with honey and squeezed to a pulp,
then warmed, like a delicacy taken
at the Mariinskiy between acts.
Note the properties of whitefish glue, he says,
that make it a perfect icon for our State – plastic
like perestroika, yet strong as the Kremlin wall,
and good at penetrating into small crevices.
Stephen Wilson’s poems have appeared in a number of magazines. He is a psychiatrist and writer. His most recent publication is The Bloomsbury Book of the Mind (Bloomsbury 2004).
Page(s) 35
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The