Sunday 15 August 2010

Patronage

Patrons were the monied classes
propping up the Arts
Underscoring all their life achievements
Patrons ordered in the Artist
dressed their wives and their good selves
and tiny children up to show their status
Brought the pearls and jewels out
and posed impatient or quite patient
hawk on arm or horse on rein
or lap or gun dog lying at their feet

And Artists ate
And Artists painted
and their family was reared on patronage
Sometimes painting in the truth
the Artists had to run
before their patron saw what they had done

Patrons ordered up the music
to laud their great Creator to His skies
Composers lived at their expense for years
and married local girls
and caroused along the river
spun their music web around The Season
proving patronage - and wealth -
was better catered to in this Grand Seat
where The master ordered music by the year
so every ear absorbed the sound
of every Lord's creation wrapped
around their birdsong living

Patrons ordered up new houses
Giant ballrooms lit by roof-wide glass
Marble pillars hauled from Italy
Saints and nymphs and Grecian urns
Parquet flooring overlaid with finest Persian rugs
Silks from China dressing every window
Golden filigree along the spines of leather books
Patronage produced the best of Art
and craft exquisite into every sphere
Planned along the decades landscaped gardens

Sent the botanist-explorer round the world
in wooden ships to find new wealth
waited hopefully for years
Accepted seeds and leaves and paintings
beads in glass and sapphire stones
Monkeys parakeets and Eastern Art
Cocoa beans tobacco plants and skins
Precious feathers from the Bird of paradise
And spread their wealth around

But patronage has levelled out
Selfish wealth will leave the finest Art
blinded in the banker's vault
Subscription of the poorer classes
pays for books of stark utility
and galleries that tourists visit

Commercial money builds the buildings
set in steel plain glass and concrete
shoves new roads through fields and lives
where once the skylark freely sang
Sometimes brilliant in concept
orders music setting sounds alight
or sets up sculpture in the park
paintings spread along the terrace-ends
Funds the low denominator
into water-colour prose or poem

Left without the life and wealth
patrons still exist
patronising this or that
passing high tone comment on the poor
peasants who are women or disabled
émigrés or starving refugees
anyone of differing religion
Patronage reduced beyond the dregs

Any fool can be a patron now
Any nit-wit standing on the circuit
Any clown whose circus big-feet talk
Patronage needs nothing more than
looking down the nose
patronage is keeping down the masses
If they patronise you
you'll accept it I suppose
After all we're just the lower classes

I say If you must patronise me Where's the money?
They say We're showing you our good intent
I say I think it's pretty bloody funny
Your patronymity won't pay the rent
05Sept1996 CPR

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