What's A Grecian Urn

[poliphilo]

Vaguely related to the last two posts- and written before Dan Brown gatecrashed the party...

            WHAT'S A GRECIAN URN?

 

            Not quite my favourite Poussin painting:

            I've been a little suspicious of it

            Since I learned it was linked to Rennes le Chateau

            And its ever so slightly too blatant message

            Is there to blind the plebs while the smug

            Illuminati  go, "Haw, haw, haw

            We know what gives."  So is it the Christ-

            Progenitor of those long-haired, has-been

            Kings- whose body lies in the tomb

            In Arcady?

 

                                    I used to care.

            I don't, not now- and I'm tired of the crack

            About death in Arcady.  Leave that stuff

            To the young.  In the San Fernando Valley

            The new Arcadians are getting it on

            In their seventies.  Why, Channel 4

            Showed us a woman purporting to be

            A centenarian, having sex,

            A little gently because of her bones,

            With boys of twenty.  One actor said

            She smelt of death.  No, son, that smell

            Was the smell of life resisting death,

            Fending ole Joe Black off.

 

                                                            Here comes

            Our title.  What's a Grecian urn?

            O, lots of dollars doing it

            On camera.

 

                                    I like Poussin best

            When he isn't being so damn illumined,

            When it's a lovely day and the chaps

            Are up enjoying the fleshly pleasures

            (Decorous ones like verse or dancing)

            Centre stage and ominous boding

            Is kept in the corner, like condiment

            At the edge of the plate.  A blue-grey corpse

            Is hidden in shade where you peer to see it,

            A distant citadel gives off smoke.