The Ducal Palace. Past countless halls filled
With broken busts, cold friezes, ghost-
s of frescoes on pitted plaster, inanimate chilled
Hearths and gorgeous, ragged tapestries, through foxy
Galleries, long and lost, snaking across flag-
s of hardest Carrara - and not forgetting the most
Odd picture I have ever beheld: a crag-,
gy isle, and round it a labyrinth cast craz-
ily into the sea - up a stepped, helical part,
A ramp for Gonzaga steeds, there in that boxy
Camera is a staggering sight: the steady gaze
Of a petrified Mantegna, trapped in a fiction, in a fact,
Of his own making, the Artist married with Art
- As if that Gorgon called Genius had caught him in the act.
With broken busts, cold friezes, ghost-
s of frescoes on pitted plaster, inanimate chilled
Hearths and gorgeous, ragged tapestries, through foxy
Galleries, long and lost, snaking across flag-
s of hardest Carrara - and not forgetting the most
Odd picture I have ever beheld: a crag-,
gy isle, and round it a labyrinth cast craz-
ily into the sea - up a stepped, helical part,
A ramp for Gonzaga steeds, there in that boxy
Camera is a staggering sight: the steady gaze
Of a petrified Mantegna, trapped in a fiction, in a fact,
Of his own making, the Artist married with Art
- As if that Gorgon called Genius had caught him in the act.
(5.2.1998)
