(irish Poems) : Francis Bacon's Studio Poem by Janice Windle

[Francis Bacon's studio has been preserved in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.]

Where is he, the artist?
Here are his brushes, bristling
from jugs and jars, sticky
no longer with the blood and semen -
I mean the paint – long
dried on their hardened tips.
Here are the tubes from which
that paint was squeezed
by Francis Bacon’s fingers, the knives
that cut the colours on the palettes,
here are the yellowed papers,
the magazines, the long-dead records
of the grisly state
awaiting all of us.

Here in this paint-streaked room
the artist forged and bled
his stream of musings on man’s fate.
Surely he’s just stepped out
for a drink at the Colony Room,
to buy some turps, get a sandwich
at the corner shop.
Surely – but no, this window’s to the past
and though we can look in,
no gentle reptile face will meet our gaze,
no Bacon walking the tightrope
between chaos and creation.