Robert M. Simmons  

from Tracings (Poems 1964-1992)

          At an Art Museum

          (Providence 1971)

If you and I could find a way to climb

into that ancient picture on the wall,

beyond reach of the turning hands of time

which mock our feeble lives until we fall,

there we could linger on enameled grass,

beneath eternal shade from varnished trees,

nearby a pool always as still as glass,

the two of us carefree for centuries.

Try to imagine us part of that scene,

our youthfulness painted in rosy shades,

forever fixed on the permanent green,

surrounded by satyrs and smiling maids,

until this canvas too, which now seems sound,

fades and crumbles into dust on the ground.

                            © 2005 by Robert M. Simmons

Nymphs and Satyr by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

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Subjects: youth, art museums, paintings, time, timelessness, decay, effects of time, sonnets, poetry, poems

At an Art Museum