This is a quick turnaround for me. We went to the Henry Moore Studios and Gardens in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, England, 4 days ago on Wednesday 15 August. I wrote this poem over the last couple of days and made a quick film. We really enjoyed wandering around the sculptures in the grounds where Moore had lived for most of his life, and seeing his tools still in the studios as he had left them.
But I did wonder about this sculpture: why was the mother looking away from the abstract, bollard-shaped baby? Why did she have no mouth to speak of what had happened to her? I found it troubling.
This is an ekphrastic poem, a poem addressing a work of art. The Romantic poets often used this technique e.g. Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats.
Reclining Mother and Child
You have given birth to a bollard,
a bascinet, a chess piece bishop
or pawn. A geometric form.
What monstrous bronze god fathered it?
Unfaced, you look to us with spade bit eyes.
Your ear recalls the cheese grater, wire brush,
the crossing file and the half round,
the cold chisel and the torch.
The fat green seals of your thighs are becoming
the eye socket of an elephant,
a verdigris abstraction.
Your hair has been hacked off like a limb.
Help me, your eyes say,
Help me. I have seen horrors
And have been silenced.