Family Vigeland Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

I felt as a student of Phidias,
either Alkamenes or Agorakritos,
escaping from all other tourists
and resorting in the Vigeland park.

The artist recommended me to his family
of seven hundred and fifty eight children,
some in the Bridge, on the Tree of Life,
some at the Fountain of eternal fertility.
I became a seed, a fruit, a new seed.

'Fight the wolf in the labyrinth ', I heard
a voice out of brass, ‘erect your body,
never permit to the time to warp it; climb
the Monolith together with the infants.'

Life is a cycle of knowledge, fate is a Wheel,
a rock in the water and in the fjords of hope,
a sheep in the tunnel finds a way out,
the white opposes the black of Adolf.*

I slept on a bench and saw Vigeland
measuring the size of my body, as if
he would enter me, as statue, in his family.