Tale Told By A Kafka Poem by gershon hepner

It’s hard to paint what’s bound to change,
or make a statue of a calf
and claim it’s God. Whatever’s strange
needs stories that make people laugh.

R. J. Kitaj painted the bowler hat of Franz Kafka. He may have seen Kafka wearing it in the statue of the writer that stands opposite a sculpture of a stiletto-heeled shoe. Kitaj quoted Kafka as saying that it is impossible to pain things that change. Jews encourage change which makes them more adept at storytelling than painting.


1/23/08