Night Watch
It’s instant art: transmuted to the net
Voluptuous flesh and rich blonde hair,
Breasts bare, pushed up by a black corselette
That echoes, with a sheen of silk,
Darkness outside the car’s interior.
As with the kitchen maid who’s pouring milk
In Vermeer’s painting, we are drawn toward
The face, the psyche; her smile’s confused,
Proud as she knows the evening will afford
None more enticing to men’s eyes,
And narcissistic, willing to be used,
Yet also as if taken by surprise,
Although the window’s down. Her husband’s caught
The moment when, from night, dark sleeves
Intruded and hands close on what they sought,
A breast, a thigh. A third man can’t
Get close enough, his hands like floating leaves,
The right one palm-out, like a supplicant
Pleading for alms. I’ve seen it in Raphael,
The lame reaching for Christ, say; and
The hands that touch and stroke look worshipful
Likewise. They’re aching to be healed.
The scene seems Christian: the ripe, glowing blonde,
A Magdalene; her husband glad to yield
Her beauty in this lonely woodland clearing
To men less blessed. Her hands are vague,
The left one, smudgy, almost disappearing
Into the unstroked breast, a shy
Gesture, as though she wishes to renege
On some domestic pact, or wonders why
Their marriage has become a rendezvous
With chaos. For beyond, more cars
And camper vans we sense, and women who
Couple with strangers, often two
Together, under trees and as the stars
Serenely move above and awed guys queue,
And watch with their car-beams. As with Rembrandt’s
Night Watch, all we’re allowed to see,
A gift, like art, to shock us or entrance,
Is this chiaroscuro, dark
And light, created accidentally,
Six hands, one woman, in a dogging park.
