Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts

Sunday, October 1, 2023

At the British Museum

In truth, crowds of the living
interest me more today
than the British Museum's
superbly lit and curated
tablets, weapons, hordes,
clocks, and deities.

A constant flow
of self-selected people
moves toward and away from
the table where I sip coffee
and scribble. A Chinese
mother breast-feeds her
child in the cafe. Teenagers

from every culture rankle
at the forced parental trudge
through these tombs (one
young woman sees my
notebook & pen and smiles:
another writer). Here come
the tall, the old, the short, the
chaired, the sexy, the enwrapped,
the rapt, the aching-arthritic,
the dazzled, the done-in,
the spongy voluptuous--

the everybody from everywhere
who take charge of idiom,
clothes, beliefs, behavior,
and most importantly:
secret thoughts, quick
connections, living impulse--
those dear seeds of civilizations.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Convicted Art

Sometimes I think museums
imprison art, jamming convicted
paintings into overcrowded galleries.

Each framed work seems
to want to live alone, lounging
in the care of just one person--

pardoned. Dull-eyed, we visitors
stagger and stand with guide-books,
stare at hanged landscapes

and superb but silly portraits.
We stumble from one walled off
period to another, under the sleepy

eyes of guards. For the crime
of having been made famous,
turned-in to authorities by collectors,

the art clings to walls, stays
still like spiders. Exhausted,
we get released into whatever

city we're visiting. Maybe we breathe
deeply and think of the fresh art
taking shape right there, right then.


hans ostrom 2022