[Francis Bacon's studio has been preserved in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.] <br /> <br />Where is he, the artist? <br />Here are his brushes, bristling <br />from jugs and jars, sticky <br />no longer with the blood and semen - <br />I mean the paint – long <br />dried on their hardened tips. <br />Here are the tubes from which <br />that paint was squeezed <br />by Francis Bacon’s fingers, the knives <br />that cut the colours on the palettes, <br />here are the yellowed papers, <br />the magazines, the long-dead records <br />of the grisly state <br />awaiting all of us. <br /> <br />Here in this paint-streaked room <br />the artist forged and bled <br />his stream of musings on man’s fate. <br />Surely he’s just stepped out <br />for a drink at the Colony Room, <br />to buy some turps, get a sandwich <br />at the corner shop. <br />Surely – but no, this window’s to the past <br />and though we can look in, <br />no gentle reptile face will meet our gaze, <br />no Bacon walking the tightrope <br />between chaos and creation.<br /><br />Janice Windle<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/irish-poems-francis-bacon-s-studio/
