On "Two Nudes"

There is a lassitude in her flaccid breasts,
his wrinkled gut and listless cock,
tedium evident in his myopic eyes.

The uncooked leg of lamb
looks grey,
past the point of salvage
by mint jelly.

Yet she has a look of contentment,
self-satisfaction,
she is remotely present.

Perhaps he has just taken her
there on the threadbare carpet
in front of the frugal gas fire
as she prepared the Sunday lunch
unbearably aroused by her domesticity.

And did he keep his spectacles on
the better to watch her expression
of exquisite pain
to reproduce it later in a masterpiece?


Inspired by the work of that title by painter Stanley Spencer