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8 May 2024
Georgia
Hilton
New Moon
We are not gold
After Henry Moore’s sculpture
King and Queen (1952)
but bronze, we take third place
to Earth and Sky
and every nature deity.
A hollow sound, an empty space,
nothing springs from an embrace
that cannot be, as we are sidelong
welded for eternity.
The birds look on, confused
by faces that collapse
upon themselves in waves,
royal inscrutability.
Perceived, but not perceiving.
Sovereign of themselves, unto themselves.
Unto themselves.
Her arms hold nothing
but her own radius.
His hand touches nothing but his own
base Throne,
thrown upon the moors
exposed to elements,
themselves Elements –
molten blood of the Earth’s
core, and nothing more.
Behind the poem...
This poem began in Wendy Pratt’s email prompt course Fantastic Ekphrastic. I was fascinated by the treatment of temporal power in Henry Moore’s sculpture, King and Queen – how essentially barren it appears beside the self-renewing powers of nature: both figures faceless, unseeing; seated together, but not touching at all. The work’s gallery label suggests this ‘image of stable and benevolent authority resonated widely in the post-war climate of uncertainty’. I rather think Moore was making a subversive statement about the nature of the monarchy.