THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
(after Pompeii graffiti, art found, in memory of New Orleans)
What did Prevert write (I cannot
find the original or a translation
so my memory must be persistent)?
"Do not fear, your dead are not dead."
Do not fear or do not weep--I can't recall,
but what difference except to a pedant?
Remains of the day:
"My love, I ate you out like I was a dog,"
"I'm saving my ass for Columbinus."
"Noli mi tangere for Caesar's I am
and wild for to hold though I seem tame."
You breathed. The lava flooded your city
thousands of you smothered, burned,
taken by the Cinder House Rules:
die all, die merrily.
Stadia, brothels, wrought-iron balconies,
erect men and turgid women
weaponded men and razor-armed women
act as though there's no tomorrow
and probably they are right.
Steven Seagal will inherit the earth.
Yet once you wrote your names on cathouse walls:
love, hate, bang, pull out, never in time
for you wrote and reproduced, reinforced
the disgusting lie that writing, even
graffiti, is an act of love that obviates,
obliviates, the love we make in life,
that these are your children instead of
the real children you might have made,
if made themselves, dead long ago as well.
We look at your words, accidental art,
know they are bullshit and terror,
yet frame them, preserve them,
because the choice is to lose you.
KTW/8-31-05
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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