17.
that fiction Jack spoke of, saying it worked
over and over
it was artificial anyhow
that heavy feeling had grown thin
and gave way to the light and air
that seemed strangely--
Well, felt good, after the weight
A New ReaL, many didn’t
want to know
another reveled in the accident
Crispin made it up -- mostly
satisfied with that.
Jack didn’t like the seeming bad faith,
life was in it’s moments
too good to be true
At this point he was always, too
sincere maybe just too lucky
Jack was facing
THE new aUsteriTy plan
to ReducE
and Radical-IZE
Akilles was trying to remember that
then finding it in the paint,
like the jumping out idea
they never got there
the figures that walked
on towards that vase
the island behind
the LeAvEs unfurled
in their positive and negative
aspects
trampling through the garbage
of fragments shored up to protect Crispin
from an certain
ruin
18.
these future moments
the ongoing remnants, The great WinD
GO NoW! his compatriot exclaimed--
shaking Akilles up from his GaRbAge can, and
stepping out-- it was gone, Crispin had changed
a different perspective
Jack was doubting the poem
not as good as the drawings
which came in similar profusion.
though there was little illusion in either
what it was pretty much
what was There
would he want to hear it again
though, remember the ShapE
or IdeA
adventure of mind
he splayed IT-- out, to amuse
wanting to feel it all had meant something--
this wandering about.
Never really--
He underlined that
in a YelloW markeR
like out of the forest into
the meadow into the sun
Crispin was a figure catching butterflieS--
never painted, Achilles, was in the desert
he went on talking to no one
of dialectics and Hegel
He’d married the woods to the flower
and superimposed the Orange Square
repeating a HeaveN
remade a simpler, kind of ReaL
seen aLL at ONCE!
So he made these bluebird houses
19.
each idea , interpenetrating
the depth and the surface,
what Jack wanted at ONCE
right NOW!
who He, wE were
and what hE, wE made
he was starting to see the difficulty
in equating the experience
and continuing
to hang onto the Idea
of a separate ART
there was an abstraction and then, the image
kept jumping the gun
and who cared except his inborn conscience,
Crispin knew it from the beginning.
The flat design made some icon
of the idea's space beneath
Did he say that?
This is finding it in the paint
as they say. They were betting
on the market and he lost interest,
his wealth was buried he wondered if
they would find iT, that
He missed Christophe
and that, Grand Idea of Art!
and the extravagance
that seemed plausible
for we were on the cusp
of the new time
There was still an ideal
There, in the Newman,
in the Indian’s blanket
It felt like America had a belief
at least an idea of-- and
the Sun was CominG uP,
20.
and would again,
and the same FigurE arriving
It was a long story, now
lengthening,
snakinG
along
it needed an image to accompany
Jack, and the two Henry’s--
he had better keep busy
make that painting
which would
remind him--
Why he couldn't remembeR
to keep-- Busy, busY
because, Achilles was out there, still
far in the distance
in the fence post ticking depth,
He was painting the sunset.
He was late and it was getting
cold, and
soon it would be dark, and
He’D be painting
The Stars, waving with his arms--
twirling ‘round
in the StarS.
