WEBVTT

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Feel like we should give you
a chance to say something.

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In 1989, I visited the Museum
of Modern Art in New York City

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and saw Anselm
Kiefer's show there.

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He's a painter who uses a
lot of straw, and human hair,

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and charred remains of books
in installation pieces.

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And I was very
struck by what I saw,

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and this poem comes from that.

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It's called "Straw on Canvas."

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In the gallery,
we are being asked

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to go back to where
the body won't let you,

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to where the body detached from
the lovely city won't let you,

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won't let you.

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Questions like, oh, distant
figure in gold, oh hitherto

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unknown culture revealed,
why is there women's hair

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all over the floor.

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In the painting,
the crypt-like vault

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recalls the structure
proposed as a memorial

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to German soldiers in Berlin.

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Empty, to be sure, like being
left with your heart but not

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an apartment.

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Is it true when the
will is silenced

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in life, as it can be for a
moment in art, there is terror?

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The ballerina
takes off her shoes

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inside a man who does
not want to love.

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He has a dream in which his
head is the monstrous head

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of the child who
cannot be loved.

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We are not going
to be able to live.

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If this is a conversation
we never want to finish,

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we are not going
to be able to live.

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What do we know in our
consideration of mourning

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when we stop looking
at the monument?

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That all experiments
in psychology

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lead us back to the hands.

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The next sequence
begins, this train

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we call summer, this sparrow
we call home, and continues

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where we sit, clearly reading
what we wish for a while.

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