Poem
Stephen Romer
Yellow Studio
Yellow Studio
Yellow Studio
Vuillard\'s studio, Château des Clayes . . .The corner is hard to judge
where the paintings in the painting are pinned
on the yellow wall (the mise en abyme
will be the end of me)
in this gleaming Institute of Donors,
this imperial temple
raised from the muck and blood
of the stockyards, out of hog-squeal
and cost-efficient slaughter
at the end of the Millennium Park
where the towers crowd and crane
in an ogre\'s silver egg,
the concentration of capital
in a cunning device.
I stare with nostalgia, with homesickness
into Vuillard\'s yellow studio
and I know the place
absolutely, it is that humane
heaven of drapes and turpentine
where I shall at last lie down
on the lumpy mattress
with the stripy bedspread
below the little skylight —
my sweet, autarchic rest.
© 2008, Stephen Romer
From: Yellow Studio
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From: Yellow Studio
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
Stephen Romer
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1957)
Stephen Romer was born in Hertfordshire in 1957; he has lived in France since 1981. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is now Maître de Conférence at Tours University, France, in the English department. Romer has been Visiting Professor of French at Colgate University, New York, three times. He regularly reviews French poetry and literature for the Guardian and the Times Literary Su...
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Yellow Studio
Vuillard\'s studio, Château des Clayes . . .The corner is hard to judge
where the paintings in the painting are pinned
on the yellow wall (the mise en abyme
will be the end of me)
in this gleaming Institute of Donors,
this imperial temple
raised from the muck and blood
of the stockyards, out of hog-squeal
and cost-efficient slaughter
at the end of the Millennium Park
where the towers crowd and crane
in an ogre\'s silver egg,
the concentration of capital
in a cunning device.
I stare with nostalgia, with homesickness
into Vuillard\'s yellow studio
and I know the place
absolutely, it is that humane
heaven of drapes and turpentine
where I shall at last lie down
on the lumpy mattress
with the stripy bedspread
below the little skylight —
my sweet, autarchic rest.
From: Yellow Studio
Yellow Studio
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