The warders rub their backsides on the wall:
their ‘ten to six’ makes masterpieces pall.
While in the rooms the tourists come and go
heaving a Bridge of Sighs at Canaletto:
will Leonardo’s light-dimmed cave
still bear that reek of after-shave?
Which leads me to an overwhelming question -
will coffee help aesthetic indigestion?
I hear the schoolgirls giggling each to each
as Boudin pulls me to the beach.
Then, should I turn and ascend the stair
to see the Horace Vernet’s there?
I grow old. I grow old.
Don’t turn me out into the cold.
The local restaurants with pasta shells
are no more bearable than Flemish Hells.
The visitors come, the visitors go,
one glazed eye for Velasquez, another for Murillo.
No time for you then, nor time for me
to watch the Sun set by a Turner sea.
No, I am not Rubens, nor was meant to be:
more the lonely sailor drifting helplessly at sea
wondering, “When will the mermaids sing to me
here within these caverns at The National Gallery?
………………………………………………………………………………..
By the way there is a reading of Eliot´s Prufrock on the site in Live Readings and shows of other poets.
