WEBVTT

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Two more.

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This is a difficult
poem for me to write.

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I was looking at some paint-
a book of reproductions

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of paintings by Gustav
Klimt, painted them

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at the beginning
of this century.

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And I found out in the
text in the introduction

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that, in fact, when he died
unexpectedly of a heart attack,

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I believe when he'd
gone out to take a walk.

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They found in his studio a
couple of unfinished paintings.

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And they discovered
his paintings

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are of very languorous women.

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And whose clothes or the fabric
of the surface of the painting

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itself surrounds and
disguises and covers.

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And the women are all I
describe them in the poem.

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I don't want to come up
with other adjectives.

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They always bothered me.

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I couldn't figure out
what it was about them.

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It really bothered me.

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And then this detail,
which is again

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buried in the poem about
the way he used to paint,

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these paintings of mostly
women's faces and arms and legs

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protruding from this
fantastic glittery fabric.

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Explained to me a little
bit about what bothered me.

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Also, I started writing the poem
identifying with the women who

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had been painted.

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And I realized that in order to
take responsibility, in fact,

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for my actions in
writing the poem,

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I had to also
identify with Klimt.

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And you'll see when
I read the poem.

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That is a difficult thing to do.

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I'm not sure that I actually
succeeded in doing it.

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But my act in writing
the poem is not

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unlike his act in painting the
women in the way that he did.

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The only thing that
you need to know

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is that Buchenwald the name
of the concentration camp.

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Also means beech forest.

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And one famous painting by Klimt
is a painting of a beech forest

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that the poem begins with.

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Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt.

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Although what glitters on the
trees, row after a perfect row,

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is merely the injustice
of the world, the chips

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on the bark of each beech
tree catching the light,

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the sum of these delays
is the beautiful,

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the human beautiful
body of flaws.

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The dead would give anything
I'm sure to step again

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onto the leafrot, into the
avenue of mottled shadows,

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the speckled broken skin.

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The dead in their sheer
open parentheses--

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what they wouldn't give for
something to lean on that

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won't give way.

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I think I would weep for the
moral nature of this world,

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for right and wrong by
pools of shadow and light

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you can step in and out of,
crossing this yellow beech

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forest, this Buchenwald.

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One autumn afternoon,
late in the 20th century,

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in hollow light,
in gaseous light...

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To receive the light and
return it, and stand in rows,

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anonymous, is a
sweet secret even

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the air wishes it could unlock.

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See how it pokes at
them in little hooks.

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The blue air, the yellow trees.

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Why be afraid?

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They say when Klimt
died suddenly,

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a painting still incomplete
was found in his studio.

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A woman's body open at its
point of entry rendered

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in graphic pornographic detail.

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Something like a scream
between her legs.

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Slowly, feathery, he had begun
to paint a delicate garment.

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His trademark over
this mouth of her body.

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The mouth of her face
is genteel, bored,

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feigning a need for sleep.

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The fabric defines the
surface, the story.

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So we are drawn to it, its
blues and yellows glittering

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like a stand of
beech trees late one

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afternoon in Germany in fall.

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It is called Buchenwald.

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It is 1890.

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In the finished
painting, the argument

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has something to
do with pleasure.

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