Читать книгу In Defense of Nothing - Peter Gizzi - Страница 13

BLUE PETER

AFTER JASPER JOHNS

To describe a logic of sight

pull the surface onto target and

arrive at zero aperture. Then

fluctuate to a face, reproduced

in serial format, superimposed

upon marginal pedestrians,

traversing a polarity of earth.

The axis here is askew, perhaps

unsettling, the way physical

equilibrium slides into multiple

perspective. This place where

sight informs the eye as gate

to phenomenon, a bridge to

impulse the imaginary. Simply

she was feeding bread to pigeons

in the park. So begin this sentence

with rain and square the surrounding

flat with common traffic. I

move through, to get here. If you

want me, you will find me in

the garden of vestiges, next to

the sweet water cistern. Where

the old port remains, a water

mark on granite, abutted with

grass and a stone path leading

to other places that for the moment

I am not interested in, as I take

serious your claim to provoke you.

And I will follow your instructions,

however silly, however sublime, until

you have found me, indistinguishable

from what you call your self.

The way I wear you about my

mouth, as a crease, deepening

every time I smile to look at you.

Look at me. I’m serious, I must

find the way, to say, we have arrived.

For it is you who instruct me in

the laws of perspective, these many

converging lines, drawn to perception.

So that I have become only a star or

an asterisk or a compass rose. Signifying

location, this possibility of place. True.

It’s been said that the burial of the dead

is the beginning of culture, as we know,

no other. And I remain raw.

Vapor digit tapping at my wrist,

the talon, the dorsal fin and the panther

claw. The value of negative space

and the rationale of talisman does

not parse, will not parry from this

dearth. As emotions surround the edge

of the planet adjusted to actual people we meet.

What could the difference of this construction

intend in a world of moments, merely

fragments provided to express conversation

or random noise signaling gray space,

to be inserted within an imported structure?

Birds migrate over cityscape and arrive

in my backyard to a mutiny of peaceful

dawn. Then a description of equality

is scored, as a rhetorical flourish is installed

for testimony. I flag. I stammer.

A banner to the burden that all things

that are, must not be, in me. Only,

will you not smile when I wave?