"Self-portrait with Patricia Preece"

(Stanley Spencer, 1936)

He is not so complimentary,
the composition a compendium
of mortal looks, a certain gravity
is pulling at them like a hungry child
and for the composition no one smiled.
Too mundane to entertain depravity
the woman looks a little tired,
a mammary gland is hanging from her chest,
laying on her side and not her best side
it would seem. The artist was inspired
though and so he put himself into it
something like a man who can intuit
what is what, and then the thing in itself.
The body as a drain, the woman herself.

Who doesn't seem to like him very much,
a lesbian not responding to his touch
and giving him the brush-off with a look.
He uses a brush, I wonder how long it took
to render a conjunction of the genders
in this manner, did she let him bend her
body in the light until he found
a composition clicking on the iron
bed. They're on naked common ground,
they don't have much in common, an ironic
stand-off, and she takes it laying down,
the Platonic and the unattainable,
she is posing in a small town
in the 1930's. The man with a brain,

you see him from behind, his head and shoulders,
hard to tell which one of them is older,
in his 40's, having turned his head,
the profile is bespectacled, the bed
in front of him, the man is not above her,
he's incorporated - did he love her -
in her hilly contours. From the side
the back of his head is framed with horizontal
hips, there's a hairy pubis blending
with his hair, and he ain't never lied.
I wouldn't have thought the English knew of frontal
nudity. Is there a happy ending,
maybe not for anyone involved.
The composition is so well resolved.

The profile of a man, a floating tit
in front of it, he isn't looking at it
and the woman isn't looking at him.
I look at both of them, a common-law hymn
to the elements of composition.
The model bored, the languid disposition
of a home-wrecker, is the man a rubber-
necker when it comes to higher things.
Why did he let this woman like a robber
in broad daylight, moving in slow motion,
cheat him out of house and home. Emotion
doesn't care? The ordinary sings
for those who're at a loss, in any weather.
A composition brings it all together.