The Japanese gallery was in a European town
the art was in traction
The town was blessed with angelic gargoyles
keeping vigil over moistened streets
and rivers pinched
behind every face-like building
Flowers deposed
in every window, limited colors.
I was not allowed to speak
about what I had seen
Even though I could not remember
I was not allowed to remember
to another
who saw it either
standing shoulder to shoulder
staring at a painting of a massacre
from which the sufferers [had] been replaced
to center the camouflage of negative space
that binds suffering to celestiality
what was the seeing after all
but transposing one’s latent identity
onto a pattern
to venture its corrosion I took a step back
+
Japanese artists were relegated to the cliffs
while western artists were permitted to keep their heads
Could open their mouths
as wide as would be
dragging bodies into the furnace
+
The password to get into the Japanese gallery
was Grey
followed by a number [began with 1]
sympathy for the lightning
defused by the people
with nomadic cerebellums in the windows
sympathy for the lightning the mud beneath the bridge
sympathy for the mud
and the way you stand
before the electrocuted rectangle the erogenous zone
rising formal out of the mud
of village living
all of life
becomes pasture
art instills
the first sentence
that initiates the drafts
all over again
seascapes? ladders into globe-like
mock orange trees?
wooden puzzles?