Inspired by an exhibition at the National Portrait gallery.
Julia Margaret Cameron
For the Birthday of Ian Prickett
Fourth of April 1990
Jarry was born about the time that these
Unfocussed and eccentric portraits were
Let loose upon the world - a living frieze
Inspired by more than love: beards framed from fur:
Angels with wings slipped off like bathing suits;
Majestic manes; frowns; stares; close-clustered hands;
Archaic crumplings covering buttoned boots;
Real characters from lost romantic lands
Glimpsed through their pupils' commas; essayists
And painters in cocoons of velvet folds
Rounding-off corners... They exhaust the lists
England's scribes scribbled. Sepia shines with golds
To light ways back a century or more.
Creating fresh Freshwaters in the mind.
Aunts, parents might have looked like this, their poor
Mortality hedged in with leaves she'd find
Eavesdropping; earmarked bookwormed buds that spring
Rings still round roads today. Science and art
Overtake time, despair and each new thing.
No face, once captured here may dare depart.
31 March 1990
Victoria - Hyde Park
Heathrow - Windsor
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