Two more.
This is a difficult poem for me to write.
I was looking at some paint- a book of reproductions
of paintings by Gustav Klimt, painted them
at the beginning of this century.
And I found out in the text in the introduction
that, in fact, when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack,
I believe when he'd gone out to take a walk.
They found in his studio a couple of unfinished paintings.
And they discovered his paintings
are of very languorous women.
And whose clothes or the fabric of the surface of the painting
itself surrounds and disguises and covers.
And the women are all I describe them in the poem.
I don't want to come up with other adjectives.
They always bothered me.
I couldn't figure out what it was about them.
It really bothered me.
And then this detail, which is again
buried in the poem about the way he used to paint,
these paintings of mostly women's faces and arms and legs
protruding from this fantastic glittery fabric.
Explained to me a little bit about what bothered me.
Also, I started writing the poem identifying with the women who
had been painted.
And I realized that in order to take responsibility, in fact,
for my actions in writing the poem,
I had to also identify with Klimt.
And you'll see when I read the poem.
That is a difficult thing to do.
I'm not sure that I actually succeeded in doing it.
But my act in writing the poem is not
unlike his act in painting the women in the way that he did.
The only thing that you need to know
is that Buchenwald the name of the concentration camp.
Also means beech forest.
And one famous painting by Klimt is a painting of a beech forest
that the poem begins with.
Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt.
Although what glitters on the trees, row after a perfect row,
is merely the injustice of the world, the chips
on the bark of each beech tree catching the light,
the sum of these delays is the beautiful,
the human beautiful body of flaws.
The dead would give anything I'm sure to step again
onto the leafrot, into the avenue of mottled shadows,
the speckled broken skin.
The dead in their sheer open parentheses--
what they wouldn't give for something to lean on that
won't give way.
I think I would weep for the moral nature of this world,
for right and wrong by pools of shadow and light
you can step in and out of, crossing this yellow beech
forest, this Buchenwald.
One autumn afternoon, late in the 20th century,
in hollow light, in gaseous light...
To receive the light and return it, and stand in rows,
anonymous, is a sweet secret even
the air wishes it could unlock.
See how it pokes at them in little hooks.
The blue air, the yellow trees.
Why be afraid?
They say when Klimt died suddenly,
a painting still incomplete was found in his studio.
A woman's body open at its point of entry rendered
in graphic pornographic detail.
Something like a scream between her legs.
Slowly, feathery, he had begun to paint a delicate garment.
His trademark over this mouth of her body.
The mouth of her face is genteel, bored,
feigning a need for sleep.
The fabric defines the surface, the story.
So we are drawn to it, its blues and yellows glittering
like a stand of beech trees late one
afternoon in Germany in fall.
It is called Buchenwald.
It is 1890.
In the finished painting, the argument
has something to do with pleasure.