after the painting by Lucian Freud

The phantom in this scene lurks unseen
Talking in riddles whispering half-truths
to each of them fueling their paranoia.
Was there a storm or is there a storm about to break?
The room: base, hardly ministerial most defiantly
Not magisterial – there is a ‘word’ absent from the scene
As yet; unuttered, hanging in a pregnant seam. Her
Look: she has thought and is musing in white picket.
He in his dark shadow has slipped in to a single dimension
In his dark world.

The play has the missing act, this scene
The link to the mechanism of comedy
Or tragedy. Words have become misshaped
And jagged. Their eyes, her eyes at least,
Tell not just a story, ‘the story’ this scene,
Plotted by them or her perhaps to write the final scene.