A hack dreams of Klimtian Viggo / Viggoesque Klimt.
[Larger.]
Beholder IISee here, that odd congregation of flags,
those black dogs vanishing in a haze,
a leaf on a chilled forest floor,
curled trunk, stained tusk, white camisole,
cluttered graffiti on the walls.
These random abstractions,
recent forgeries of the ways of things,
they are what I revere,
the elusive, the fleeting, the evanescent ---
the moment that passes over once, and fades.
You say I take far too many,
that I seem to be in constant vigil
of scenes at the periphery.
Is it some coincidence of memory
that compels, some urge to mark
the ebb and flow of days,
lest they go stale, lay mundane?
And I say, what does it cost to remark on
the lines of this silhouette,
the graceful fall of fabric beside decorated skin,
the eloquence of ghosts dancing, or
an ineffable fleck of pale wings undulating in green?
What is there to remember: a tail, a hand, an ear,
a baby’s foot, dead fish, or calf, pig, or bird,
passing through the desolation of Tamdacht,
disappearing into Chetwood’s otherworldliness,
the bright chaos at Odense, the prospect
of a snowstorm at Te Anau,
even the daily grind in Venice.
It’s all I know to take, how can I disengage?
These are my points of focus, uncertain
exposures now merging in a blur.
See, underneath this assemblage
of traces, evocations, ephemera ---
Wanyánkin ye yo. Look at it:
Beholder.
Miyelo. It is I.
Kholá, it is you.
19 October, 2003Note. The digital collage was an entry I submitted for a creativity contest at viggofanbase.com a couple of years ago. For the collage, I drew the lizard, took the swirly light photos, and used a poem I had written the year before for the background text. Beholder II above is that same poem. I won a Viggo Mortensen CD for the collage (or was it a book, I forget). I can't remember if I entered the poem simultaneously for the poetry category. I think I won something for that, too.
