Tuesday Poem

At the Musée Des Arts Decoratifs

The rooms preserved for us are always

calm and empty – no newspapers

or stained tea cups, not even open bath salts

in Jeanne Lanvin’s opulent salle de bain

where the toilets, hunkered down on the perfect floor,

have leopard print lids.

No telephone rings, no email waits urgently

and the dimmed lights are always on

as though the room has readied itself for us.

We peer through artful windows yearning

for a big bath to drown in or

one slick corner of parquetry

as though that’s all we’d need.

I buy lunch instead, expensive

salad with bresaola,

the best in Paris I’m assured but I know

the closer to art you get

the more it all costs.

Out on the street the hustle never stopped

and young women shop the Sales

for that pair of shoes which will magically

dance them somewhere they can shine

blameless and forever

held.

Catherine Bateson, June 2013 

My writing challenge today was to write an ekphrastic poem, which I didn't quite do, I admit. I did see lots of beautiful things I could have written about but somehow the experience of peering into perfect rooms arranged with such finesse was my inspiration here. 

Why not jump over to the Tuesday Poem hub?  You'll find a fine poem on the hub -  'planchette' by James Norcliff, curated by Keith Westwater, tightly relating an experience that's in strict contrast to my own poetic musings? It's an experience that nonetheless I relate to - we have had wildlife of one kind of another in our ceiling since I moved there nine years ago. You can always tell when the rats dominate as they make quite a different sound from the possums. Curious? Go on, you know you want to read it now!