I was a sad young man
on a train
a train
(a train)
always a window
on to something else
being transported
through Time & Space
landscape passing through
my dreaming face
real rain
falling on my reflection
the train travelling
through various states of the soul
again to this star.
“Again to this star! ”
I thought
I thought
this thought
dreaming of you nude
ascending & descending
staircases
you changing
the condition of my being, even
stripped bare
my life
this anaemic cinema
a series of swimming lessons
without ever
touching water
memory itself
a painting on glass
that cracks
thought…fractures
“Again to this star! ”
“Again to this star! ”
I urge
myself
my face
hurtling through the darkness
of this lonely night
sleeping softly
against the glass
always a window
onto something else.
****
Spin off from the latest May Ray/Duchamp exhibition at the Tate Modern…reading again a book of entertaining interviews I got in New York twenty years ago the poem I simply took all the phrases and titles of works that appealed to my sensibilities and strung them together to describe my original train ride into the Big Apple all those years ago.
I adore Man Ray and Duchamp for their sense of wonder and wit and the humorous way they have of letting the art find them and manifest itself through them.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
This says it all...'sense of wonder and wit...letting the art FIND THEM and manifest itself through them....' and, in turn, it has manifested itself through them and into your talented pen. The art DOES FIND YOU, as you said, and you do it so well.