#2 He’d filled it uP.
JacK was saying he wanted to try
it all from the Imagination
to draw just from there, his head
he made it up--
we used to say, the clap of hands
was like the surface, truth, TherE!
Why had that meant so much?
the outline, a shape,
a stripe
"I see what you are trying to do," Alex would say
but he also thought
this was all too complex
a kind of abstraction
repeated,
and turning
revealing the blank in our eye
11.
we denied
a blind man seeing for the first
would mean something--
seeing black
an irony
we struggled beyond
a can of white and a can of black
was all he had
a new beginning, again?
a new MoDerN-- modern
the nEw, the NeW, seeming glut
of post-- PosT--
he dove in, was soaking wet,
kicking round with his Shield
on his arm, he emerged
he was still searching
for this abstraction, he discerned some
medieval abstraction--
CarniVal coloR
Waving, dancE
from a deep space,
to a thing itself
"and would find himselfself
more truly strange"
and clear
seeing in a new way
with no cliche
but archetype,
I guessed a cliche itself
they were all having dinner
by now
business being discussed
we were still at the bar
there was a HerO that cried that
he was dead,
that his adventure had failed him,
and ComediaN genius,
cartoon character and hieroglyph
Oh, glad to be back out here
in the SUn
Snowing, though there were no cloudS
starS Bright
Jack was sitting having a quesadilla and jalapeno
over kitchen sink
the ConstellationS were revolving round
out the window
thinking about the size of the painting
that last judgemenT
thing, he had on his mind
the nearing final reality, he thought
nearing, he hadn't been up to the
pRaYeR flags in a while
he watched the health
of the Tree at the center
he stood up there reading his poem
the SSnaking river below
the cycles would lift him above
he was thinking on Beauty
he was thinking on deatH
it was his mOther
he thought about.
He was WobBbling down
the lane on his bike.
Another painting ahead--
It was GobBlinG him up.
the leaves were ongoing
He said "fuck you, if--"
A JoKe, well, I’m not sure about breaking it all
the leaves are enough and the
cartoon shape
no man shall see--
Odysseus
15.
was puzzling it all together
that fast surface
he leapt out the window
cold stone sober
what he saw--
SufFiceD,
a spot of time, here
repeated through a life
through a broken breeze
painting the lives,
through which leaves hopped, skittled
and over days, hours, a moment
here--
it was the goings over
he was coming home
here was a garden,
he could manage--
he held the idea
in his teeth
it was the flower
he saw in Zurbaran
there was a moment when
all metaphors became one
in the sun.
He was thinking of the old certainty
even if not a reality
what we expected from our intellectual
refinement, what we made up
17.
that fiction Jack spoke of
ReducE
and Radical-IZE
Akilles was trying to remember
that, then finding it in the paint,
the jumping out idea
they would never get there
the figures that walked
on towards that vase
the island behind
the LeAvEs unfurled
in their positive and negative
aspects
trampling through the garbage
of fragments shored up
18.
to protect Crispin
from certain ruin
these future moments
the ongoing remnants, The great WinD
GO NoW!
his compatriot exclaimed--
shaking Akilles up
from his GaRbAge can, and
stepping out--
it was all gone,
Crispin had changed
a different perspective
this wandering about.
Never really--
He underlined that
in a YelloW markeR
like out of the forest
into
the meadow, into the sun
Crispin was a figure
catching butterflieS--
he never painted,
Achilles, was in the desert
he went on talking
to no one
of dialectics and Hegel
He’d married the woods
to the flower
and superimposed
the Orange Square,
repeating a HeaveN
remade
a simpler,
kind of ReaL
seen aLL
at ONCE!
So he made these bluebird houses
19.
each idea , interpenetrating
the depth and the surface,
what Jack wanted at ONCE
right NOW!
who He, wE were
and what hE, wE made
There was still an ideal
There, in the Newman,
in the Indian’s blanket
It felt like America had a belief
at least an idea of-- and
the Sun was CominG uP,
20.
and would again,
and the same FigurE arriving
It was a long story, now
lengthening,
snakinG
along
it needed an image to accompany
Jack, and the two Henry’s--
he had better keep busy
make that painting
which would
remind him--
Why he couldn't remembeR
to keep-- Busy, busY
because, Achilles was out there, still
far in the distance
in the fence post ticking depth,
He was painting the sunset.
He was late and it was getting
cold, and
soon it would be dark, and
He’D be painting
The Stars, waving with his arms--
twirling ‘round
in the StarS.
