For Antonioni and Bergman
d. July 31, 2007
1
So many of the blogs
and articles, even those
whose authors remember the films
as films, not DVDs,
apologize for liking them
or the mysterious elitist need
to honor them. They drop
excessively many names
of current whores and clowns
to show there’s no one like
these two *artistes today,
and won’t be, and can’t be
in “the era of the worldwide
triumph of popular culture.”
And to prove that the writer
shares in the triumph,
does not regret “high art,” that
distinction. Though what it meant,
what these two guys actually
did, remains obscure; the trick, as always,
is to talk about something else.
This poem may be doing the same thing.
One day, after what he imagines
was a heroic struggle,
a hamster’s wheel detaches itself
from its frame and rolls away.
The hamster doesn’t recall
his efforts to free himself
but he assumes he made them. And
the music, as he frantically climbs
the tiny rungs, is exciting, keeps
him going. And the view
is colorful, and apparently ever-changing.
Since he only has, however,
the brain of a hamster,
he doesn’t notice that his wheel
is moving in a circle.
2
In a handsome hotel on the Côte d’Azur
or Costa Brava, an African
is ushered, silently, politely, into a room
by a thug representing
certain interests. That is to say
they pay him; the African
refused their price, or any.
And is no longer young
or physically strong, and has nowhere
to go. The thug smiles,
spreads his arms at his sides,
and points with his right hand
at his left, then with his left hand
at his right – the hands
with which alone he will torture
and kill the older man. Then he closes the door.
Elsewhere, in a cold,
peaceful place, a woman speaks.
It is a letter, but we see her.
She describes the progress of her eczema
from her hands, which bled and were bandaged,
to her shoulders and chest
and face – it is not there now –
and its effect on her lover,
a minister. How it repulsed him
to the point of complete separation,
and how it had not occurred to him,
in this matter, to pray. She says,
quietly as always,
that she has come to understand
that she wants to live only for him;
that neither has anywhere else
to go; that he must use her love
however he can.
The minister reads, then folds and refolds the letter.
There is not and there never was
a God who superintends
our doings and, however subtly,
repays. There is only,
here and there, a camera.
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