The Girton Poetry Group

Not Averse

looking

        I don’t know what makes art Art

        maybe it’s that once I’ve seen it

        I can never not see it again.

        It lingers     violently

        like a good Pollock should,

        hanging on a nail inside my eyelids.

              Is it true that a thing of

              (heart-stopping) beauty looks at you

                    you do not look at It

              sees inside you

              and lodges a    piece    of itself there?

        Breathless, I stand being looked at

        immobile    open   ripped apart.

                    Then the light changes or goes out altogether

                    and I can’t quite remember the first way I saw it;

                    lost    like all beauty.

                          But knowing that to hold on

                          would tarnish it all I can do

                          is let it pass through and hope

                          I get one last look.