<\/p>\n
Uffizi<\/strong><\/p>\n Florence,Spring 2006<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We lounge in the 8.30 am queue<\/p>\n watching the marbled living statues<\/p>\n for so long, we grow bored and<\/p>\n speak instead of\u00a0 how quickly the<\/p>\n tourists stride across the piazza,<\/p>\n how determined they are to tick off<\/p>\n the must-see, must\u2013snap places.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unlike us, who wait patiently for paintings<\/p>\n we have peered at in books, on slides,<\/p>\n Mouths dry, licking our lips,<\/p>\n the proximity of genius making us shudder,<\/p>\n The queue quivers – false alarm –<\/p>\n the disabled are wheeled or guided in,<\/p>\n we sigh\u2014not long now.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And we end up on the roof, drinking chocolate.<\/p>\n After all that pacing and staring, speechless,<\/p>\n surprised at how small the Leonardos,<\/p>\n how huge the Titians, how bright the Botticellis,<\/p>\n how thick this chocolate, how blue the sky,<\/p>\n our eyes grown indiscriminate with so much looking<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vivien Jones<\/strong> lives in southwest Scotland, writing poetry and prose, year about. Two chapbooks preceded a first poetry collection , About Time, Too<\/a> <\/em>(Indigo Dreams Publishing) published September 2010. She also won the 2010 Poetry London Prize. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Uffizi Florence,Spring 2006 \u00a0 We lounge in the 8.30 am queue watching the marbled living statues for so long, we grow bored and speak instead of\u00a0 how quickly the tourists stride across the piazza, how determined they are to tick off the must-see, must\u2013snap places. Unlike us, who wait patiently for paintings we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2810,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2808\/revisions\/2810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}