Beachcomber on the shores of tears <br />Limning the gestures of defeat <br />In dancers, whores, and opera-stars – <br />The lonely, lighted various street <br /> <br />You sauntered through, oblique, perverse, <br />In your home territory a spy, <br />Accosted you and with a curse <br />You froze it with your Gorgon’s eye. <br /> <br />With what tense patience you refine <br />The everyness of everyday <br />And with free colour and a line <br />Make my mysteries of flaccid clay! <br /> <br />By what strange enterprise you live! <br />Edgy, insatiably alone, <br />You choose your tenderness to give <br />To showgirls whom you turn to stone – <br /> <br />But stone that moves, tired stone that leans <br />To ease involuntarily the toe <br />Of ballet-girls like watering-cans <br />(Those arguers at the bar) as though <br /> <br />In their brief pause you found relief <br />From posed dilemmas of the mind- <br />Your grudging aristocratic grief, <br />The wildcat cares of going blind. <br /> <br />Well, walk your evening streets and look <br />Each last eleven at the show: <br />The darkening pleasures you forsook <br />Look back like burning windows now.<br /><br />David Campbell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-art-of-edgar-degas/
