a premise that I am because I make
some sign ofpresence, all
that is signified by the marvellous
post-juridicial compound
self-evident.
The claim is likely
to be clamorous, uncivil, often
sacrilegious in its effects
(hence the tendency to label it
no less than a misdemeanor,
more likely a mania). I refer
to the patently incorrigible
yen to inscribe our handiwork,
or rather the play of our hands, upon
whatever amplitude is bare
and blank enough to show that we were there.
As
a rule the billboards are not put up
to put up with our marauding,
and it is a tribute to the discretion
of our poet's heretical
heroism that he scores identity
by absconding the evidence of it,
withdrawing himself from the scene.
Most of us are not like that. We require
a signature; KILROY WAS HERE
we scratch on the fresh paint somehow, and sigh
with authorial satisfaction. Now
behold the field from which Mark Strand
proclaims himself absent: here is a wall
and at its base a ruined car
filled with spray-cans that strew the ground as well,
and every inch of wall and car and ground
is covered, cancelled,
encrusted
with the spirit-writing known as graffito,
cursive abuse, cacography
which by its very glut becomes glamor,
