Liberties

And that is why I paced the corridors Of those great museums Gazing at paintings of a world In which David is blameless as a boy scout Goliath earns his shameful death While eternal twilight dims Rembrandt’s canvases The twilight of anxiety and attention And I passed from hall to hall Admiring portraits of cynical cardinals In Roman crimson Ecstatic peasant weddings Avid players at cards or dice Observing ships of war and momentary truces And that is why I paced the corridors Of those renowned museums those celestial palaces Trying to grasp Isaac’s sacrifice Mary’s sorrow and bright skies above the Seine And I always went back to a city street Where madness, pain, and laughter persisted — Still unpainted