Skin is Time and Lets Itself be Flayed

By Iain Bamforth

He saw, or thought he saw,

his skin become time’s curvature …

Having peeled it off, he holds it

up for further inspection

in this troubled classical landscape:

Apollo’s deep bare garden.

and his a skin of tenderness,

a hammock of social obligation

and naked reconciling

in the city of the covenant

(impersonal 

love of the human

at the service of his art),

 not the see-through foolscap

of a world made flat,

one surface that everywhere folds

into the trite hosannas

of Eros’s other job—

unprofitable bookkeeping …