FIVE PIE ( E
S by W. S.
Merwin
THE PERMANENT COLLECTION
In a rich provincial city there is a museum as imposing
and quite as large as any
in
the capital. The facade is immense and
the portico dwarfs the visitor, seeming to fill the space between
his
usual size and
his
shrunken self with an echo. The style of the build·
ing is not obviously contemporary, though it could have been pro.
duced by no other age. It manages to suggest, with its general pro.
portions, high columned halls and open
airy
courts surrounded by
enormous arcades, an entire classical tradition in which temple and
palace are never completely distinguishable from each other. The
approach to the building is lined on either side with marble pedestals,
each of them empty. Across the top of the main portal there is a
large panel for a name or inscription. It is blank.
The museum is referred to, in the literature supplied by the
chamber of commerce, as The Permanent Collection - the gift of
an anonymous donor. The terms of the donor's
will
stipulated that
there should be no other designation. But publications for which the
city administration cannot
be
held accountable reveal
that
the mu·
seum was the bequest of a local millionaire whose forbears, through
several generations, had played a dominant role in the exploitation of
that region. The name is common in those parts, on streets, banks,
office buildings, bridges, housing developments, foundations. But the
family - at least the direct line for which these have all been
named - has died out. The last of the line was the builder and
donor of the museum.
In his youth, according to the local historians, he had fallen
in love with the daughter of another wealthy household, at a northern
