Poetry
The Collected Poems of Steve McRoberts
The Collected Poems of Steve McRoberts
  Still Life

A clumsy artist's brush, too fast for art
is reaching out and scrubbing viewers' eyes.
But where does painting end, and viewer start?
Can anyone say where the difference lies?

If thought or movement be indicators,
the lighted tube must take the highest places
with grave-robbers and temple desecrators
for shining torch-like on remains of faces.

What would I see if I could turn around
and through this camera see them fettered there
with chains of thought, or like mummies bound
in dust that falls and winds from off their hair?

I'd see the cause of every vacant stare:
their eyes are blind from sponsors' labels,
their heads, long dead, retain a ripening air
like bowls of fruit on so many tables.

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