‘MAGNA GRAECIA’

I.

London and New York,
The Greek and Roman world(s),
The fragmented, broken
Place that inhabits
Museums, both here
And elsewhere, but
Not there, nor any
Place recognizable
To human eye and hand;
The bleached bones
Of polychromatic wonders,
The stelae inscribed
With words unreadable,
The portions of passions
Spent, the vitrine for
Dionysos a peculiar
Antiseptic affair,
And torso upon torso,
Rumored relief of
Artist brought
To Attica, from East,
Or Greece to Rome,
Or Lydia, or why
Etruria perplexes
Still, all this,
And all that’s missing,
Frozen in lifeless tableaux,
Signed, numbered,
And forgotten …

II.

And even the
Sensuous particulars
Trouble eye and mind,
Thought and reflex,
To touch a time
That’s fallen out
Of time in the
Whirl of other times,
Empires lost below
Empyrean, and tombs
And monumental hubris
Brought to nought
Like white dust
In grey mausolea,
Ariadne asleep,
Lizard skittering,
In stone, nowhere,
Sparks of something
Carnal, flecks of
Rose and black
Or blue pigments
Barely discerned,
And glass or
Stainless steel
Prosthetic, raises
Questions to never
Be answered,
Such naked promise
Set aside …

III.

From Cycladian
To Archaic gestures,
Toward a naturalism
That arrives from where?,
From Orient to West?,
And back, circling
Aphrodite, or
Glimpsing shades
Of spectral hordes,
In stone but now
Devoid of shadows,
The southwest light
Crossing times,
Frieze alight,
But for a moment,
From somewhere what
Is called the ‘Miracle’
Arrives on wings,
In sleep, with Hypnos,
Or carried in amphora,
With wine, to
Thrace and then
To Athens bound
To marble and
Terracotta, bronze
And gold-silver --
Reliquaries of vision
Mixed with war
And conquest …

IV.

And that still small
Matter matters,
To the eye and
To the heart,
And to the slow
And fragrant air
Of ages spent
Prowling sea and
Sky for what in
Other words might
Say the things
Forever unsaid,
Unsayable, unformed,
And most of all
Denied; or that
One thing alights
On winged sandals
In galleries, in
Tombs, in acre
Upon acre of plunder
And theft,
Excavation and ruin;
The last and
Holy thing unsaid,
Unseen, unheard,
Untouched, not tasted --
That light that
Crosses human faces …

GK (DRAFT 07/11/07)