Ophelia

Stay one moment or an artist's vision will come to nothing by our hands.
I visited an art gallery this morning and dwelt upon a classic beauty,
Mourning that my fellow visitors, as I, showed poorly in her velvet light.
The keyboard-hunched shuffling about her painting as if for warmth,
Outdoing their rivals by dressing up in studiousness but dumbing down in understanding,
Outdone by a long dead girl captured by a long dead artist, motionless on canvas.

No, stay a moment longer, my story has an ending,
I should have left that gallery doused in admiration for that artificial beauty,
Instead each step was a heavy falling to earth, to a world of rich colour faded.
Against her silky skin I held the man-made scratchy fabric of my time,
Against her piercing eyes, deliberately absent glancing stares of passing strangers.
I closed my eyes against the bricks and mortar, wishing a brush into my hand.

But the brush I did not need,
Nor this pen, for my words are just a shady mirror of what I see,
Opening my eyes, drab existence threatened, clawed forward,
But receded, for there you stood.
A classic beauty for the modern day,
Soft skin, embracing eyes, untouched but touchable.

I pity the poor artist who pictured you before your time,
Immortalised your face in canvas yet unborn,
But never heard your voice or felt you move,
So many generations awed by the art,
Never to meet the subject,
Don't go, step closer, for I owe them this.