What are these that eye me?
Say eyes that canvass ùs;
A glare, a puckered gleam,
Burn us twofold; cupids leer
And squinny; a musketeer
Ogles whoso stands before.
His outlines blur; he swims;
We are his pupils; an iris
Swallows what we wish to hide.
Old age flowered wryly. His women
Scream or take their ease; he
Took his models, took his time,
And we take time to recollect
Ourselves, to reassemble,
Find out where we stand.
We find ourselves in him while he,
He found himself in what he saw
As nature worked him through.
Shutters blind the window;
Nature morte in studio light
Stirred him more than turbulence
In the Paris street. His eye
Fixed a staked tomato plant,
Leaves sharp, like spears,
The ripe fruit bend - save one,
Grey-green, unweighed with pulp,
Swims upwards towards the light.
We look at what Picasso saw,
Ignoring bullets chipping trees
And boulevard façades, cocking
One ear, no doubt, to cheers
As they took the city back
In preoccupied Paris, life field-grey,
Feeding on whispers. It was then
He watched a green plant
Amid owls and mirrors, candles, bones.
Daylight came, the window stood ajar;
New colour sprang with age,
Blue jugs and cherries frame the skull,
Eye sockets fill with yellow eyes,
A cat queries a stalk-eyed crab,
The owl in the centre crooks its beak,
The hurt owl watches, cocks a snook,
As the painter drills his canvas
And his other wall eye mocks us.
Tanks shook the house like love
While he stayed still. Freedom
Shattered not his poise,
His lounging nudes ignore us,
But he invades our city
And we, the apples of his eye,
Are framed; face interrogation by
The soundless yellow gaze
Of his nocturnal sun.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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