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30 May 2022
Ivor
Daniel
New
Moon
At the Paula Rego
Inspired by Tate Britain’s
Paula Rego exhibition (2021)
A young girl
torments
a pelican.
A monkey
proffers
a poisoned dove.
Some of us wear masks.
I search for symbolism
under the bed.
You said that once
you were afraid of everything.
I don’t see that.
Catholicism,
dictatorship,
finishing school,
life.
These everyday interiors
where hands are tied,
sanitised.
A bare arm in a jackboot.
A handbag yawns –
so red
inside.
We gaze with fascinated cruelty.
Is that a pregnant man?
I know that you would
order the world differently,
if you could.
For now,
your paints and pastels
interrogate
what is wrong
with us all.
Behind the poem...
I visited Tate Britain's Paula Rego exhibition in the summer of 2021 – my first 'real life' cultural event in 16 months. The combination of Rego’s uncompromising paintings and our wary emergence from COVID-19 lockdowns was powerful, unsettling. Here was dumb patriarchy; life under a questionable regime; the devaluation of truth in the public domain. Better to be led by artists than by donkeys.