CREATIVE SCHOLARSHIP

Ruskin in St Mark’s, Venice: The Stones Talk Back, January, 1877
John Unrau

There you are again:
down from England,
notebook in hand,
measuring my marble flanks,
watercolours at the ready,
icy fingers
trying to coax
thin madonnas down
from my darkening gold.

Yes, there is warmth
in my alabaster limbs,
as you wrote, John,
but it is for the eyes only,
and all eyes at that.

You have left the girl behind,
that crazy one
dead in Ireland,
and though I may be
-- as you so kindly wrote –
despite these cursed restorations
“as lovely a dream as ever
filled human imagination”,
and sincerely grateful
for your protection
(not to mention
the great publicity):
I cannot be your woman.

Copyright John Unrau. 2000. Iced Water. Ireland: Salmon Poetry.

John Unrau is a well known Ruskin scholar. He published Looking at Architecture with Ruskin (1978) and Ruskin and St. Mark's (1984), both with Thames and Hudson. Dr Unrau’s first collection of poetry was titled Iced Water, published with Salmon Poetry (Ireland), in 2000. Currently, he is Professor of English in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University, where he teaches courses mainly on 19th and 20th century literature and directs the Canadian Writers in Person reading series.