Offertory

 David Wagoner, 1926-2021, American

 

 

Ready to leave for work, I look around

 

 

Living Room, 1948, watercolour. 

Andy Warhol, 1928-1987, American. Collection of the Paul Warhola family on loan to the Whitney Museum in 2018/19

The living room of the artist’s childhood home in Pittsburgh, PA.

 

 

To check windows and switches:  in the sink,

 

 

 Cactus, 1931, oil on canvas. 

Charles Sheeler, 1883-1965, American.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

 

Still Life with City Hall Tower (Philadelphia), 1981, hand-coloured etching. 

Elizabeth Osborne, born 1936, American.  Woodmere Museum, Philadelphia

 

 

 

A pool of coffee poured from the last cup

Gleams near the drain; the ring in the bath

 

 

A bath in a house in West Shokan, Ashokan Catskills, NY; with loving thanks

 

 

At its own level holds my body up;

And crumpled on the bed, blankets like sheep

 

Morning, Interior, 1890, oil on canvas.

Maximilian Luce, 1858-1941, French. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 

 

 

 

The Breakfast Tray, c. 1910, oil on canvas. 

Elizabeth Okie Paxton, 1878-1972, American.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

 

 

Crouch where the ram came, reeling, from his dip.

 

 

Not a ram but a goat and suckling kid; hard paste porcelain, c. 1772,

Johann Joachim Kandler, 1706-1775, German. Meissen Manufactory, Germany.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

So many rituals: two cups for the gods

 

 

 Porcelain mugs made in the eastern US between 1985 and 2015

 

 

Of the left and right temple, the grounds gone

 

 

To the right and left statues of Amenhotep III; c.1390 BCE; porphyritic diorite.

Originally in Thebes and now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York

 

 

Where all libations go; on porcelain,

 

 

Milk and Honey, 1994-96, two thousand porcelain objects, glass and wood.

Charles LeDray, American born 1960.  Whitney Museum of N. American Art, NY

 

 

My yesterday in an upright, shrinking lather;

 

 

A Man at his Morning Toilette, 1887, oil on canvas. 

Maximilian Luce,1858-1941, French.  Loaned by the Petit Palais, Geneva to MOMA, NY in 2020

 

 

Dial down and ticking under the pillow-slip,

 

 

Unknown provenance from an exhibition of furniture, MOMA, NY , 2015

 

 

Two sheets to the wind hauled back from sleep-

 

 

Flying Dutchman, 1920, oil on board. 

Man Ray, 1890-1976, American

The Flying Dutchman is a Richard Wagner opera of a ghost ship destined to sail aimlessly forever.  The artist saw these torn sheets in a tenement area of New York.

 

 

 

Customers preparing for sleep on a train from Ahmedabad to Jaipur, India. 2010

 

 

 

I leave these for the maker of light

 

 

Amtrak’s William Gray III Station (30th Street Station) in Philadelphia where we met sunrise days without number at the start of workdays which required us to travel away from Philly.

The angel lifts up the dead of two world wars, employees of  the Pennsylvania Railroad. 

                                                                         

                                                                                 whose rain

On the alarming morning fell again.