Byron Beynon

Musée du Louvre
From his 1993 collection Restaurant of Mud, published by Stride.
An umbilical queue of people
is attached to Pei's pyramid.
Once inside I take the escalator
that descends from the modern entrance
to the underground bookshops and cafes,
where visitors pay to enter
the wings of the museum.
A bewildering choice of rooms and corridors,
a plethora of antiquities, paintings, sculpture,
the calm Mona Lisa
behind bullet-proof glass.
"In the Louvre at one o'clock",
Mary Wordsworth met Annette
for the first time, and Caroline
always called William "father".
I am a victim of fascination,
a magnet for the flow of life,
its fever, its vanishing point.