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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0256 What are those kids up to?</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It’s in a quiet corner to itself<br>away from the grandiose creations of the<br>Italian Renaissance gallery, so<br>you can stand undisturbed to wonder<br>just what’s going on? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A small painting: in a peaceful<br>green and hilly summer countryside, <br>not a soul in sight except<br>these three – children? - their faces under<br>their hoodies seem known to each other<br>but shadowed, small, not asking to be<br>known to us; absorbed, maybe learning, and <br>they’re enacting, in this remote spot, <br>the Crucifixion</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Jesus hanging patiently up there, a bit like<br>a kid trying it out for himself to see<br>what it feels like (and there was a case, a kid<br>a few years back, on Hampstead Heath, <br>it was hushed up; no accomplices let on) : <br>Mary’s quietly grieving, no big painterly<br>gestures there; she’s huddled up, a girl<br>who’s really learning about emotion as she<br>acts it out; John, lost in thinking as he<br>tries to meet in his boy's mind, the<br>dimension, the immensity.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It would be easier, if this were<br>a short story by some masterly<br>South American writer: <br>three kids who have been totally<br>unexposed to scriptures, find this<br>Bible book, read it as, like, science fiction, <br>decide to act it out. The master<br>of short stories would have to<br>work out the denouement: <br>did the kids, unobserved, pack up<br>and return to normal life, but<br>secretly transformed in inner mind? <br>Or did one die, as on Hampstead Heath, <br>the others never let on, and yet<br>never forget? And later, become…? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or would a well-scripted film, <br>like 'Whistle down the Wind', make<br>a memorable, reasonable reality<br>of this, subtly balancing<br>fiction and emotion, <br>that children and their parents<br>would go to see together, even<br>buy the video? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It’s such a private scene, this rehearsal<br>of the event so hard to imagine, <br>even if you try; as if you were<br>on a fast Italian train; saw it flash past<br>your window; not quite believe your eyes; then already<br>two kilometres on, wonder if you should have<br>pulled the communication cord with<br>that elegant Italian instruction<br>next to it? Or try to tell the guard<br>in your halting Italian, that you’d seen<br>the Crucifixion back there…he’s Catholic, <br>you’re crazy English…yet, it happens..<br>‘miraculo… miraculo…! ’ the train’s<br>many kilometres down the line by now; <br>the kids have maybe had enough to<br>last them a lifetime.. packed up, gone home..so<br>some kinda joke, Protestant English<br>taking the mickey out of <br>Catholic superstitious visions? Best say nothing, <br>it’ll work itself out in God’s good time<br>so to speak</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">We’re sensible, down to earth people –<br>A prosaic answer, perhaps? Like, <br>this is a record of the moment in art<br>when rumours of the delicate<br>realism of that strange but skilful, detailed Flemish art<br>hit the idealist Italian scene, by <br>secondhand account? ‘Yes, <br>they paint very carefully, real<br>young people in a real landscape, <br>acting out the greatest dramas –<br>you should try it…’</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or perhaps some quietly, intensely<br>devout patron might have said, <br>I'd like a small Crucifixion scene to take<br>around with me, or have upon the table<br>in front of me to inspire my poetry; <br>no need for dramatics, nor for labouring the point; <br>just paint the scene; take my own children<br>as the models; that will touch me more...</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460718" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the still silent backwater of this public gallery<br>the Crucifixion plays itself out in paint, <br>privately; you’re reluctant<br>to leave it, to seek the tearoom; since, <br>no answers; only<br>questions</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>