Exhibit

This poem was written as a response to "The Visitor" by The Devil's Surrogate, a k a Inkspill: the poem will be found in the archives on her blog. I am given to understand that she read it (her poem) at the recent Read Meet in Poona.


It was almost closing time, and the keeper
jangled his keys on his rounds.
Late afternoon shadows recessed deeper
into the gloom, and the night’s first sounds

were tuning their pitches. I saw her enter,
uncertain in the light, or rather, lack
of it, walk down the centre
of the long marbled passage to the back,

where I was. “Five minutes, lady!” I could hear
authority sing across the dark corridor,
as she stepped up closer to peer.
She caught her breath, though more

through beating the clock than awe,
I thought. She knit her brows, gazed intently,
and in the minutes given to her she saw
what the blind centuries had failed to see:

not love-light in a statue’s eyes,
but history’s finely sculpted lies.
***