#801 - ‘a seat in St James’s Park’, 1869

 

15.iii.22

801

3.74

George John Pinwell’s ‘a seat in St James’s Park’, 1869

ekphrastic

 

class in a tophat

all the colour in those cheeks

stern grief

 

empty hands of music

frowns, eyes cast down

where no one gives

 

cropped beard and mutton chops go by

clutch of are they cockerel?

 

leaf scattering  

 

and the soldier he looks on

and his girl umbrella blue

her eyes avert

 

the thin framed pram

its timber wheels

 

how leaflessly these trees about

someone lives behind us

in a house of that time

 

horses past gates

all fade to the already past

 

who’s gloved?

who’s not?

 

a basket here to briefly rest

bonnet of the baby black

and one detects a curl

 

dim as day is now

lamps remain unlit

 

as if we pass time here

where they are trapped

moustaches and a cane to scratch

 

none look beyond the frame

 

all grey to conversation

silence

 

and where will a pigeon land?

 

here’s the boy with a bright balloon