Instants of Poetry Written in Memory

The brilliant psychedelic pyramid that recently sprang up overnight near Speakers Corner in Hyde Park was being dismantled today. The glorious incongruity of its blazing pop colour panels quickly gave way to metal skeleton. I watched as cranes and workmen did the work of vultures. Its flesh, reminiscent of Roy Lichenstein high on ayahuasca, directing graffiti gang to honour Akhenaten, was stripped with carrion
efficiency.

As this glorious creature was excarnated before a largely uncaring London, I felt like I was losing a friend. It has been magnificent glimpsing it through the trees each morning. Some days it has stood to like a defiant alien edifice, beamed down from above, not meant for England's cold grey gloom. On others it has focussed its sharp lines towards the blessing of autumnal sun, an Atenism temple that has bled through from some parallel dimension.

It is only because I live in a culture so dedicated to preserving the ephemeral, that my natural reaction is to feel sad about the pyramid disappearing. Romero Britto's 45-foot structure has been a temporary wonder, a magnificent artistic explosion as a dream is manifested in the real. Life itself is a temporary wonder, its best moments – from orgasm to the first taste of a Crème brûlée – instants of poetry written in memory. Maybe there times when we need to go beyond the desire to capture everything in a digital format to rediscover that some stabs of beauty are enhanced by their inherent mortality.