Sir John Soane Museum

Sir John Soane Museum
Hidden off the busy street
By a quiet London square
A woman’s sitting on a bench
 a Scottie dog runs round and chases leaves
Its cold - but then its January -
In a town house - leave your mobile at the door
And your luggages and bags
For passing through the corridors
No photography’s allowed
It’s lit by candles and by daylight - no electricity
The light flows in through glass that’s tinted
yellow ,blue and ochre
The ancient light of Tuscany and Rome
Funnelled down and led by mirrors
Onto a wild array of marble and of chiselled stone
As if they grow here in their eccentricity
In wild fungi of wondrous forms
Of wounded hart and plaster casts
Of saints and Apollonian youths
Of putti and of emperors
Of catafalques , philosophers
Of stately matrons and a skull
Until it falls
On gleaming , smoothly marbled walls
The light comes flooding down a well
And this is winter - out - beyond the doors
In here its always Italy
It is a text book in 3D
What isn’t here ? if you just look around
Between heroic feet and horses knee
And bits of giant anatomy
The arms of Venus might be found
Wrapped around a pipe of lead
In the pantry where the plates are stacked
Next to the scullery and deep slate sinks
Here’s a gryphon heres a sphinx
Heres a thigh with hefty thews
Here’s an angel’s neckless head
Here’s a random piece of Muse
Its not a museum - its a house
That’s being taken over by these shapes and curlicues

Alas poor Fanny - there’s a mausoleum
Down there in the well of light
Piled with scrolls and ornament
almost excessive for a Caesar
Or a great Etruscan queen
Repurposed - it commemorates a dog
A terrier from Manchester who died at seventeen


January 2019