BACON AND FREUD

Selfish rivals yet close friends
one Irish, the other Jewish
toughened by a lens of survival,
no juicier gents of energy
than these painters of genius
as sunlight passes over them
isolated in their studio
these artistic disbarred dissidents
with portentous portraits
from linear art at the Tate,
both prudent in an innocuous state
as we view Bacon's "Van Gogh"
where his life abstracts secure
as foreboding photographs
covering a war and on going strife;
and unblushing Lucian Freud
with his Soho drawings
after Cezanne
brushing up his still life
making his critics annoyed
or unwillingly unemployed
taking in our own time to scan.