Listen now (2 mins) | The Museum at Cluny It was hot and bright in Paris that day. We took the metro to Odeon and walked to Cluny. Behind some partly excavated roman baths was a gothic building turned museum blessedly cool, and dark, no line, toilets. You hardly cared what you saw. A lot of alabaster saints. Gold reliquaries shaped like the Virgin, holding Jesus. A narwhal’s horn, like a jousting spear. Blue incense boats and tiny cast iron cooking toys. Five tapestries of a lady and a unicorn, the unicorn unexpectedly small-headed with a long horn (like a narwhal) and a beard, grinning. The lady sometimes sad, standing next to a miniature orange tree. Lapis and gold, going by not faster but slower, as though you yourself are falling into the middle ages, when everything impractical was for God except perhaps a single pair of earrings. And back again into tumult and city, looking for ice cream near the Luxembourg Gardens. -- Amy Isikoff Newell, ~ 2012
The Museum at Cluny
The Museum at Cluny
The Museum at Cluny
Listen now (2 mins) | The Museum at Cluny It was hot and bright in Paris that day. We took the metro to Odeon and walked to Cluny. Behind some partly excavated roman baths was a gothic building turned museum blessedly cool, and dark, no line, toilets. You hardly cared what you saw. A lot of alabaster saints. Gold reliquaries shaped like the Virgin, holding Jesus. A narwhal’s horn, like a jousting spear. Blue incense boats and tiny cast iron cooking toys. Five tapestries of a lady and a unicorn, the unicorn unexpectedly small-headed with a long horn (like a narwhal) and a beard, grinning. The lady sometimes sad, standing next to a miniature orange tree. Lapis and gold, going by not faster but slower, as though you yourself are falling into the middle ages, when everything impractical was for God except perhaps a single pair of earrings. And back again into tumult and city, looking for ice cream near the Luxembourg Gardens. -- Amy Isikoff Newell, ~ 2012