The Flagellation of Christ, ca.1455-1460

Piero della Francesca

The Flagellation

Henri Cole

Soon they'll knock nails into him, but first there's this, 

a lesson in perspective with tow worlds coming together:

one gloomy and transgressive, let's call it super-real,

a world behind this world, in which a man is tied to

a column—his hair and beard unkempt, his body raw,

though not bleeding—muttering, "I am afraid to fall down,

but I will not be dominated"; the other world is surreally

calm, with saturated colors and costumes of the day, 

a youth's head framed by a laurel tree, nothing

appearing larger than it is, so the eye drifts back 

to the deviant, the melancholic, the real, emotion

punching through the rational—like mother cat with five

kittens in her tummy purring in my lap now—

as a man for his beliefs receives blow after blow.

Vowel
Alison Watt

Phantom 

Don Paterson

         i.m. M. D. 

III

(Or to put it otherwise: consider this

pinwheel of white linen, at its heart

a hollow, in the hollow a small hole.

We cannot say or see whether the hole

passes through the cloth, or if the cloth

darkens itself — by which I mean gives rise

to it, the black star at its heart,

and hosts it as a mere emergent trait

of its own intricate infolded structure.

Either way, towards the framing edge

something else is calling into question

the linen's own materiality

and the folds depicted are impossible.)

                               after Alison Watt: 'Breath'

Saint Francis in Meditation, 1635-9
Francisco de Zurbarán

Phantom 

Don Paterson

         i.m. M. D. 

II

Zurbarán's St Francis in Meditation

is west-lit, hooded, kneeling, tight in his frame;

his hands are joined, both in supplication

and to clasp the old skull to his breast.

This he is at pains to hold along

the knit-line of the parietal bone

the better, I would say, to feel the teeth 

of the upper jaw gnaw into his sternum.

His face is tilted upward, heavenwards,

while the skull, in turn beholds his upturned face.

I would say that Francis' eyes are closed

but this is guesswork, since they are occluded

wholly by the shadow of his cowl,

for which we read the larger dark he claims

beyond the local evening of his cell.

But I would say the fetish-point, the punctum,

is not the skull, the white cup of his hands

or the frayed hole in the elbow of his robe,

but the tiny batwing of his open mouth

and its vowel, the ah of revelation, grief

or agony, but in this case I would say

there is something in the care of its depiction

to prove that we arrest the saint mid-speech.

I would say something had passed between

the man and his interrogated night.

I would say his words are not his words.

I would say the skull is working him.

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912
Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase

X. J. Kennedy

  Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,

   A gold of lemon, root and rind,

          She sifts in sunlight down the stairs

        With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

            A constant thresh of thigh on thigh—

     Her lips imprint the swinging air

     That parts to let her parts go by.

     One-woman waterfall, she wears

      Her slow descent like a long cape

 And pausing, on the final stair

    Collects her motions into shape.

__________________________________

Marcel Duchamp: Nu descendant un escalier

Joan Hambidge

and a semicircle of dirt-colored men
about a fire bursting from an old
ash can
—William Carlos Williams

Om trap af

kaal te loop

was eens

bekend

d'abord dans debort

découvrir

dehors

demi-

af

af

af

in 'n kubistiese raaisel

sonder oplossing

kopskuddend nee

laat hy loop

laat hy ver loop

tot by die valreep

of die senings

in die vleis

wys:

aint got that swing

in die visuele woordspel

opstand teen

retinale kuns:

arroser la vie.

___________________________________

     

Pears, 1994

Alison Watt 

Mechanical Soft

Henri Cole

Walking yesterday in the cold, bright air,

I encountered fifteen horses marching

in a phalanx down the avenue. Long before

they were visible, I heard their shoes striking

the pavement, as language is sometimes audible

before sense arrives. I loved how the wind played

with their long, brushed tails. Though in a faraway

place, I was not a stranger. Mother is dying,

you see, and proximity to this death makes me

nostalgic for the French language. I am not

a typical son, I suppose, valuing happiness,

even while spooning mechanically soft pears—

like light vanishing—into the body whose tissue

once dissolved to create breast milk for me.