The Painting of the Magpie’s Muse

There’s one light 

in the main hall 

of this dystopian exhibition  

that never quite seems to go out—

it’s soft, subtle, 

but burns through the room;

it’s the magic of twilight 

no doubt. 

There’s something that keeps going down round here… It's something that happens only at night. 

There’s something that softens the horror of this gallery. It has something to do with that light. 

It sweetens the pastel paintings  

of principalities and apartheid. 

It muffles the vivid artistic executions  

that are still taking place outside. 

The light is one of looming sorrow, 

complicity masked by patriot-joy. 

It sweetens the carpet bombing of children, of little girls and of little boys. 

It gleams from the centre 

of the dull oily eye  

of a mixed-media magpie  

with head raised to sky. 

Beneath its breast 

and the twigs  

and the eggs, 

there’s a silver plaque that reads, 

‘The Shiniest Object of the West’ 

I giggled and chuckled from the dark side of the room: a magpie could never capture the light of the moon! 

I thought. 

I’ve now reframed what I once mistook 

for a magpie poised for flight. 

I will no longer salute to the beck of a thief that’s suited in black and white.

by Marcel Bedeau