16 FEBRUARY 1991, Page 28

Two Galleries

Strolling these stuccoed chambers walled with dreams What is it that you like? You come and go With news of Rubens and Correggio And Jove's outrageous rapes, Ovidian themes Of revelation where the lover seems By being a bird, or coins, or cloud, to show Indifference to that process which we know Requires in girls a sprawl of pinks and creams.

Pure theatre, wilful, impossible!

I linger in a room of Breughels, lost To turnip children stout in winter clothes Whose gods do not descend in poses full Of lewd intent, but live in games and frost And peasant weddings with their clogs and oaths.

John Fuller