Iain Grinbergs

LETTER TO THE BODY AFTER FRANCIS BACON

I enter the poem
like a butcher: the handle
splintering, carcasses
draped into gestures.
Bodies are never safe—
that might be the first
truth. Like how I was laid
on the operating table
for a heart that harried
My brain. Descartes
was wrong. There is no split—
when a body breaks,
everything goes with it.

I need a quiet life.
A morning walk, the sun
tripping over the Thames,
the smell of oil paint
and dark roast coffee,
a frangipane resting
on the kitchen table.
No one to bother me
but a fluffy cat. I’ve tried
to write pretty poems,
but something always veers—
like gin in the morning,
like breathing in paint thinner.

Father, it may be right to say
I never learned to want
in the proper way.
It may be right to say
I still need you.
It’s still the boy’s flesh
that stalks me—
the breath behind his
too-white teeth.
What did I know of wrestling,
except that I never asked
for it, yet I wanted
everything it offered,
laid out like ribs gleaming

in a box. A ruin can be exquisite
in the present tense.

Francis, tell me: Was it mercy

to render pain so exact?
What is flesh if not

a desperate argument
against vanishing?
Is the grotesque even necessary?
Perhaps it’s better not

to name it. Perhaps it’s better

that the paint’s still wet.

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