William Blake’s head
Rears through the chaos
There is a photo of a Zebra carcass,
Gracefully rotting on the floor
There are brushes,
Plonked in jars like dried, splayed, flowers
There are paint rags, rainbowed trays,
Mammoth brushes eager to be up and doing
A ceramic bowl as a palette
7,000 items, all exactly transplanted
Suspended animation of a painter’s life space
Including:
570 artist books and catalogues
100 slashed canvases
1,300 leaves torn from books
2,000 artist materials
70 drawings
Correspondence, magazines
Paint spattered furniture
Vinyl records. The walls, doubling as palettes
And an untitled unfinished self portrait
Found on the easel after Bacon’s death
A canvas holds a circular outline
Made by a dustbin lid
Bare light bulbs hang from sinister flexes
No shades, glaring, stark
Sinister echoes of the Furies
Daemons, Disaster, Drink
His father’s grooms horsewhipped him as a child
For being different, dressing in woman’s clothes
He grew to love rough trade and burglars,
The fringe men of Society
No wonder his Pope screamed
Popes should scream against
The victimization of the not-the-same
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem