An email with the subject line ‘escultura censurada’ caught my attention a couple of days ago and had me wondering whether the sculpture in question had been censured or censored.
Reading on, I think both verbs were appropriate.
Continue reading “censorship, censure and nonsense”
While many other people were busy celebrating ‘the wedding of the year’, I took a day off in Nottingham and revisited places that haven’t changed for centuries, although the areas around them have altered so much in 30 years that I had difficulty identifying any connection with the time I spent here in the Seventies.
At the castle I found this stone as part of a large display of inlaid decorated paving in the gallery forecourt: 
This should, of course, have been posted a couple of days ago for the fiesta de la inmaculada concepción on the 8th, but I’d completely forgotten its existence. It was written as an example of ekphrasis – in this case, a poem inspired by a painting – and I think for once it’s absolutely clear that I am not the narrator.
Es injusto, ¿sabes? They’ve hung me here,
expect me to balance on this blue-green planet,
not to slip and do myself a permanent
impaled on that luna creciente, despite the worm
at my feet and this beastly little cherub
pulling at my cloak while his colegas try
and sneak a peek up under my robe;
I’m pretty sure that even that one
over on your right who’s looking
rather more demure is actually
checking in the mirror, just in case
he gets a better view.
As for the clothes, ¡qué asco
de ropa me han dado! Couldn’t they afford
a bit of lapis lazuli? They call me
“Queen of Heaven” and yet they dress me
in the dowdiest of drab without a flounce
or furbelow. It’s no good telling me
my sandals have peep toes – sin plataformas,
ni tacones they’re not exactly what you’d call
“letizios”, now, are they? And what about
that blessed bird? Everybody thinks
that it’s a crown of stars I’m wearing, whereas,
in fact, it’s all the good-luck guano
Paloma, there, has found it in her sacred corazón
– or elsewhere – to contribute to this travesty
of taste. No es justo, like I said;
it isn’t fair: here I am, in Spain, hung
on the Prado wall, while out there
in the street, they’re living la movida Madrileña.
Can’t anybody see I’d really rather be
a flamenco dancer?
In London for a few days and I see they are having an elephant parade.
This is the only one I have got close enough to photograph so far, and although bright enough in himself, he didn’t go far towards brightening the dingy turning off Oxford Street where he was located.
Continue reading “irrelephant”
My neighbours may think I should be concerned about meeting wild boar(s) in the vecinity, but not all such meetings are to be feared.
The picture is a close up (full image below) of one such beast that I came across at the Feria de Arte in Arenas de San Pedro a couple of weeks ago and that I really wish I could have taken home with me.
Continue reading “hunter of dreams”
don't confuse the narrator 