From Antiquity: The Insufficiency Of The Solitary Greek Figure Poem by Dennis Ryan

January 10,2003; revised Tuesday morning, October 28,2014 at 9: 42 a.m.

"Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place.It must move
As little as possible."
- John Ashbery, "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"

"This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that
might mean.And nobly dead.I think we should feel
he was nobly dead.He fell in battle perhaps, "
the lecturer said, quoting another poem in the lecture hall;
but what I want to know is this—what, if anything,
does this kouros know that we don't?What, if anything,
is he trying to communicate with his eyes?
What does he signify, this solitary striding figure
standing strangely erect?Something about...
community?Do his eyes signal something about ...?
The figure gathers on beaches and streets and in parks
only through coincidence, and, with its companions
forms a tableau of desire, as if the power of desire
could counteract, contraindicate our basic absurdity.
Alone in that moment of utter immobility,
does the figure wish to lash out at the gods,
the gods never here, never there then, never present
to witness, to care, to minister to our needs?
Well, I need, you need.You and I need to look
this human figure in the face and ask, "What exactly
is it you need?What is it, if anything, you are trying
to tell us? ""Nothing.Absolutely nothing."Forever
beautiful and erect, there is, here, in his muted presence,
a marked absence, an ignorant absence at the center of things,
a blank stare, a hollowness, an emptiness approaching dead silence.

"Nihil ex nihilo fit"—nothing out of nothing—
What do we make of universal causation when we
don't even know where we stand nor where we begin?
Nothing.Nothing begets nothing—negation following negation—
this has been the formula, the hallmark of Western masculinity,
of masculine protest from antiquity.Nothing from nothing—
his self-portrait—his long, braided hair, his comely face,
his left foot stepping strangely through space.Are we deceived,
self-deceived?What are we?Standing here, stepping forward,
I know that from misplaced convictions we have compromised
our rights and liberties for a false sense of security; today, this polis,
this nation seems buried forever in willful, forgetful killing:
"just three Iraqi children died today."Kroisis, youth, you act again today
as young Americans die far away for an appearance and a seeming.
Kouros, smiling youth, you who can neither hear, speak, see, feel nor reason,
move, step forward, lead the way—we will follow you at our peril.