Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery
Staircase to a wider-screen
paradise, Quattrocento ascent
carved voluminous by capital:
each block cut smooth & . . .
This patronage of the dead:
time-honoured, canonical
to a fault, & then some.
Can you broker sacred space,
Sainsbury? Reduplicate serene
magnificence of side-chapels
found on the continent? Transform
this municipal precinct with cash-
sterilised rooms? Make sanctified
fanes with mere cell-partitions?
Devoid of rite, transubstantiation,
Eleusinian Mystery; no katabasis
to subterranean regions. Regional
hells are one thing, trans-national
paradisoes quite another, smug Patron.
Take that for votive-offering, as you
donate your infinite wealth as stake
for immortality’s nacreous wreath.
Millions ascend, descend . . . yearly.
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
You do not have to ring
the bell-pull these days;
a kind, sedulous guide
exemplars the ancient rite;
then, with a card swipe,
unlocks the age-worn
door: technology’s
professional brevity.
‘Louvre of the pebble’,
home of plastic vortices,
where we recline with
Epoch & Artist, The Seven
–Storey Mountain, a lemon
tea which slowly cools.
Maximised space, timely
aesthetics: line & plane
& palette. This is where
we eat, this is where we
perform our ablutions.
And over there, we hear
the Grand Piano played
of an evening. This is the
cottage of living finely:
candlestick, pebble,
sculpture, painting
artfully arranged, as the
old curator’s hand in his
own home left it. Castle
Street’s incline honours us
as we stroll away, musing
on all that he bequeathed:
art is the house of being.
Mark Wilson