THE AESTHETICS CLASS
(11/22/63, 1:55 PM)
That term, I had to reduce
Croce's Aesthetics
to a pile of notes.
That is all I remember of
Croce's Aesthetics.
It is 42 years later.
Aesthetics ceased to matter
that day at 1:55 PM Eastern Time,
when someone flung open the door,
whispered in Nicholas Capaldi's ear,
and his face turned
the color of a whorehouse sheet.
The guy walking down the hall with me,
much too removed, I thought, to care,
says "Oh God, I hope whoever did this
wasn't a Jew."
On old films even now
Cronkite cracks the newsman's code
his voice breaks
year to year unto this,
I can smell the moldy pages
and blue cover
of the Croce Aesthetics
but I can still hear Cronkite's
split-second choke.
In the Library over Christmas break
I poured through the Aesthetics
again, more notes scrawled out,
ink on my fingers like black blood,
looking in a theory of Art for the answer
I would never find because it didn't matter.
KTW/11-22-05
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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