THE LINES
67
nothing in that moving early period could predict this dead academic
painting that now results. Though, of course, like all reactions, this too
• is bolstered by an elaborate metaphysic: an eighteenth-century theory of
the
cucina della pittura-a
strict equivalent in painting for the Italian
theory of "fine writing" in literature.
THE LINES
Mter the centers' naked files, the basic line
Standing outside a building in the cold
Of the late or early darkness, waiting
For meals or mail or salvage, or to wait
To form a line to form a line to form a line;
Mter the things have learned that they are things,
Used up as things are, pieces of the plain
Flat object-language of a child or States;
Mter the lines, through trucks, through transports, to the lines
Where the things die as though they were not things-
But lie as numbers in the crosses' lines;
Mter the files that ebb into the rows
Of the white beds of the quiet wards, the lines
Where some are salvaged for their State, but some
Remanded, useless, to the centers' files;
Mter the naked things, told they are men,
Have lined once more for papers, pensions- suddenly
The lines break up, for good; and for a breath,
The longest of their lives, the men are free.
RANDALL JARRELL
