Magical Mystery Tour
Gavin Ewart
Part One
Surely I remember?
The coach that look the Sixth Formers
to see the Blakes and the Impressionists and the
Post-Impressionists
and the
Cubists, and the sculpture of Rodin?
Van Gogh's chair, Modigliani's wonderful peasant boy,
Beatrice addressing the Likely Lads from the car,
the Simoniac Pope?
Surely, I remember.
Fifty years ago!
And now I go back to see The Ghost of a Flea
so well remembered, and The Man Who Built the Pyramids
(forgotten – if seen) and James Ward's Gordale Scar
and Maillol's three nymphs with identical leg-lengths
and a marvelous sunstruck outburst of Turners,
all as potent
as fifty years ago.
Part Two
But there's a lot new there, to see,
and in Nineteen boxed-in Thirty Three
they'd have blushed red to know
such a pubic Delvaux
and the sculpture would quite spoil their tea -
while one painting, The Sword Of The
Pig,
shows in detail what leaves
of a fig
were once much used to
hide
(though Blake's drawings
tried) -
a male organ quite
lifesize and big!
And McWilliam. His Eye, Nose and Cheek
would have boggled the minds of the meek
who were after Burne-Jones
and his temperate zones
(not
Picasso, that two-faced old freak!),
likewise Warhol's repeated Monroe,
Arman's shaving brush Venus, would go
near to making them mad,
and they'd surely be glad
to leave Lichtenstein – WHAM! BAM! what woe!
They'd be mystified, as by George
Smiley,
bye the abstract arcane
Bridget Riley -
and go straight
as an arrow
to the construct by
Caro?
I don't think so,. Though
we rate them highly.
Still there's the trompe l'oeil
fresco/frieze
where in past
years they served all the teas,
Rex Whistler's pastiche!
Now
it's red wine and quiche -
but
the whole lot is what you can't
please!
Gavin Ewart (of Scottish descent) was born in London in 1916. He has worked as a salesman, as a publisher, and as an advertising copywriter, as well as for the British Council. His poems are contained in two books, The Collected Ewart 1933-1980 and Collected Poems 1980-1990. He has written three books of verse for children - the latest being Like it or Not. He is the Editor of The Penquin Book of Light Verse, and in 1991 he received the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Next book: 85 Poems (Hutchinson, Spring 1993)