WEBVTT

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Two more poems.

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Gail Orlen, who's
a terrific painter,

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was in an art history
class last semester.

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And she had to do a term paper
on the German painter, Albrecht

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Dürer.

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And she became fascinated by
one of Dürer's self-portraits,

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a self-portrait
done in 1500, him

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facing outward from the
canvas, with his hand

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in a strange, almost
arthritic gesture.

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It's an incredibly
compelling painting.

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She ended up doing a
self-portrait of herself

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within the same pose.

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And I became fascinated with it
because it was so compelling,

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and because Dürer
himself had written

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what, to my mind, at least,
was something strange

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on the painting itself.

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And I've enclosed that as
a quote within the poem.

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It begins, "I, Albrecht Dürer."

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But Dürer also was
the first painter

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to do extensive
realistic self-portraits.

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And it seems like it's the face
of modern man, in some way.

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It's also the face of
Christ, in a sense,

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because he imitated the Man of
Sorrows paintings of Christ.

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It's a very somber painting.

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One other thing you should know.

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In the year 1500,
everybody was going crazy

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because it was one of
those 500-year spans when

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they thought the end of
the world was coming.

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I think that, for
the year 2000, I

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hope I'm alive to see
everybody go nuts.

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I read in the
newspaper about a month

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ago that someone who assumes--

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a corporation has been made
up of people with money who

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assume that the world will,
in fact, come to an end

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by natural destruction
in the year 2000.

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And they're building
a community in Texas

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for all the people who
believe as they do, OK?

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That's going to be a
great place to live.

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But what they're going to
do is, when the year 2000

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comes and things
start to go wrong,

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they're going to go
up in big dirigibles.

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Use that ride up in the
sky waiting for things

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to even out, and then
come back down again.

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Poem's dedicated to Gail Orlen.

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Title is "The Face of Dürer."

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And it simply runs-- it's
from the self-portrait

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and runs into the poem.

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The face of Dürer is
perhaps the face of Christ,

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had he a moment alone in the
jail at the city of Jerusalem,

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just before his deliverance
to another, intelligent enough

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to both ritualize the
judgment and absolve himself.

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Thus, perhaps the artist
face of Pilate also.

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Men like this
recognize each other,

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are aware of the burden
of another's seriousness,

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which justifies their own.

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I, Albrecht Dürer,
the northerner,

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have painted my own portrait
here, in the proper colors,

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at the age of 28.

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Outside it is 1500.

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The world is crazed
with its own ending,

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is allowed no
believable consolation.

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Sometimes at midday, only the
rumble of carts may be heard.

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All he is doing is bearing
witness to himself,

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though he will be the first
and last of us to do so.

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No revelation, none at all,
unless his genius is itself

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the process of revelation.

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The figure emerges from
its black background,

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the hand's singular
gesture, the face that helps

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identify, identify the future.

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There will be no plague, no
further wars or oppressors.

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We shall stand like this a
long time, as before a mirror,

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as before one another.

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