Ekphrastic Lines that Hover over Two Men Stilled in Love in Hugh Steer’s Blue Rug (1994).
Hugh Steers ‘Blue Rug’ (1994) painted in the year before his death from AIDS
Everything is still:
the bed still folded back,
the chair still bears his shape.
We stand so formally
Our hands don't touch, but hold:
Hold on still, forever.
From above that room looks closed were it not
for this light that grows up its walls, as if
it had left the bed to rise up, gaze down
from a space that shatters open ceilings.
Let them all see our hands supporting
each other, hold each other in so close
that a formal stance is wanted, allows
our bodies to touch in parts, soft against
each part that barely holds its own hard weight.
The chair still holds the shape his arse made there,
The bed folded as when the light awoke.
Neither chair nor bed is wanted. Our stance
alone together makes us one alone
still, as we stand here still so many years
In paint. Bodies that hold another close
are one body. To be against him is
to be with him in the only space where
forever is. Holds my heart close as he.
The rug signs are read in another way
Than his shadow falls from the chair on which
he'll fall too, too soon, and watch his other
die into the light on that reaching wall.
Blue Rug is described in Gemma Rolls-Bentley (2024: 33) Queer Art: From canvas to club , and the spaces between, London, The Quarto Group, Frances Lincoln.
With love
Steven xxxxxxxxx
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