Lucian Freud's model

The hands are very well done

says the man at the front

and he moves on

leaving everyone 

looking

at bones jutting through

the skin

of someone 

who does not want to be there.

The savage pigment

scours

a dissecting table,

flays

livid tissue,

but polite scalpels

are blunted,

neutered in fright

and eyes

sluice off

to where

the naked

onlookers

wonder at deaths

sadder than their own.