response in vision, but it fails here,
where the partaking viewer is freed
into the under-skin of his fear.
Existence is laid bare, and married
to a movement of caught perception
where the unknown will become the known
as one piece of the rolling mountain
becomes another beneath the stone
which shifts now toward the happy valley
which is not prepared, as it could not
be, for the achieved catastrophe
which produces no moral upshot,
no curtain, epilogue, nor applause,
no Dame to return purged to the Manse,
(the Manse is wrecked) -not even the pause,
the repose of art that has distance.
II
We, unlike Munch, observe his The Scream
making words, since perhaps we too know
the head's "experience of extreme
disorder." We have made our bravo,
but such, of course, will never equal
the painting. What is the relation?
A word, which is at once richly full
of attributes: thinginess, reason,
reference, time, noise, among others;
bounces off the firm brightness of paint
as
if
it had no substance, and errs
toward verbalism, naturally. Mayn't
we say that time cannot represent
space in art? "The fascination of
what's impossible" may be present,
motivating the artist to move.
