kate vanhinsbergh

PREGNANCY POEM

Manchester Art Gallery

These photo-realistic boards of borrowed light

and pigments mixed against the grain of wood,

they are time pooled into the canvas,

months and months of work, the artist

returning to the frame again and again

with a quiet dedication.

I quite like the one of the redhead farmer girl,

whose inscrutable expression holds her man

at arm’s length —

he comes up behind her to touch, cheek-to-cheek,

offering her the death’s-head moth

for inspection.

Or the twice-painted Perseus and Andromeda,

the first attempt considered ‘too vulgar’ —

the milky skin and lush red coverlet

under the pursuing eye of eros.

In another room, there’s you, breaking with tradition

and gleaming on a plinth, something new,

an addition to the museum’s collection:

a cloud caught in a glass bell jar,

something indefinable, with no label,

and the weather around you speechless.