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Cycladic Figure
Better than Brancusi. Nobody has ever made
an object stripped that bare. — Picasso
After the Fall,
after the plummet from pliable green
and lambent shadow, all impression
of the garden vanished. Imprints
of blossom and fruit, entangling vine,
leaf and animal and bird
in their once and perfect forms—
these have been excised.
Exile has pared this image;
implement and need have come.
And the mild, vaporous dawn
that could not die is lost.
Lost, the life on which wild world
engraved itself, blunt kinship
with beasts and stars in that before
where bloodshed daily was
unconscious and undone.
Not yet begun: the known,
our waking dream, labor of time
and the mistaking mind.
Soft Minoan frescoes are not quite
imagined. Inconceivable the Attic
art that will be born in grace
and die diffused in ornament.
Languages, philosophies to be caught
in the nets of possibility, faiths
and wars and kingdoms—none is yet.
Luminous, seeming to be made purely
of tenuous light, this figure clasping its own
form is born altogether of earth
that has given such reflection
again into our hands,
a charm, a grave conjecture
thin as the new moon.
This candle we may bear
as we have done before
into the sepulcher.
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