Here's a poem for Gail Orlen.
The Face of Durer.
I love Durer's paintings for a number of reasons.
He and Bruegel are probably my favorite painters.
And I think one of the reasons with Durer--
I didn't realize it until I was thinking about this poem
last night and what went into it.
I think one of the reasons, because I associate Durer
so much with a sense of sureness of self-knowledge,
self-identity, whatever, partly through the self-portraits
that he did, is that his paintings seem that sure to me.
They seem not sculptural, but not really human either--
not exactly of this world.
And in this particular portrait, this self-portrait
which was done in the year 1500 is full face,
Durer looking at you, looking at himself painting himself.
There is a kind of intense scrutiny to it.
I mean, it may be just the painter's eye.
But it's always seemed more than that to me.
It's a Christ-like self-portrait.
He looks like Christ in the painting.
I read a beautiful thing that I jotted down
from somewhere last night that said something to the effect
that Durer recognized that Christ
had been an honest teacher.
It was wonderful and unusual.
And two other things are included within the poem
which are important.
One is that the portrait was done in the year 1500, which
was a time when people believed, or many people believed,
the world might come to an end as we do every night at 6
o'clock if you watch the news.
The other is that there's an inscription, which
given the fact that this is one of the masterpieces
of Western art given the intensity of it, is strange.
I've included the inscription within the poem.
It begins "I, Albrecht Durer," and concludes
"at the age of 28."
For Gail.
The face of Durer is perhaps the face of Christ.
Had he a moment alone in the gel at the city of Jerusalem
just before his deliverance to another intelligent enough
to both ritualize the judgment and absolve himself.
Thus, perhaps the honest face of Pilate also.
Men like this recognize each other,
are aware of the burden of another's seriousness,
which justifies their own.
I, Albrecht Durer, the northerner,
have painted my own portrait here
in the proper colors at the age of 28.
Outside, that is 1500, the world is crazed with its own ending.
There's allowed no believable consolation.
Sometimes at midday, only the rumble of carts may be heard.
All he is doing is bearing witness to himself,
though he will be the first and last of us to do so.
No revelation, none at all.
Unless his genius is itself the progress of revelation.
The figure emerges from its black background,
the hand's singular gesture, the face that helps
identify-- identify the future.
There will be no plague, no further wars or oppressors.
We shall stand like this a long time as before a mirror,
as before one another.