Jasper Johns: Near The Lagoon 2002 - 3 Poem by Mark Mattson

It found itself embedded in wax
This catenary cord
This cotton string

Pressed into hot wax like an ancient seal,
then ripped from the cooling surface,
nearly drown, torn out cruelly, leaving a scar.
Not once or twice but over and over again.
A modern penitence, painful hints, scrapes of color
smothered on the common and in the gray

Reborn at length,
pristine, pure, untouched white
its inevitable curve floats before the canvas
Shading lightly the scarred grey wall.
- Unmoved now by ritual and story -
Renewed afloat above the lagoon