Overheard at the Tate

Here's Pierrot and some dreamy-eyed boaters -
they must be us, I’m sure you’ll agree -
pretending to let something escape:
metaphor-stuff trickling through their fingers
dangled over the side of a world they think
will float in sepia tints forever, I reckon.

Look at Pierrot staring, haunting the bottom-right;
this moon-mad clown was happy once to drift,
trusting in still-water centuries and frolics
that soothed his silly visions of hell, while
his flour-white mask concealed his horror
of the cracks he saw in the future’s crust.

Now Pierrot’s peeping into a house,
seeing children sprawling with kitten-eyes;
televisions showing roaring rockets with leaping
astronauts confirming multitudes in their new religion -
wasted on this cat - what an obvious symbol -
pyramid-slow, building his bunker of sleep.

See over here, between the willows, so easy to miss:
Pierrot’s hit the rapids and tumbles in the gale; 
his smock's turned shroud; his pallid sleeves
are fooling in a flash - the apocalyptic gestures
of despair no-one heeds - and, of course,
the bloodless face, the pointed nose of a moribund.

Does it remind you of a poem by Verlaine? Sorry?
Oh, you’ve had enough? Let’s move on to the next room.

.

Reviews

[NotUsinganymore]

Very nice story poem. It had a nice but dark ending too

[Gerald Parker]

Not sure you've understood this poem. there's no story. There's two people looking at four paintings. One is providing his interpretation of each one. The reader is being asked to speculate about what the other person is thinking.Thanks for reading and commenting.

[NotUsinganymore]

Very poem tells a story. c:

[Gerald Parker]

That's news to me. What's the story in my poem?