Howard Firkin
(the vanishing point)
The unseen lines draw you, and you are made,
drawn somewhere outside inside, to a point
where disparate is unacknowledged, joint,
where light is one variety of shade,
but you are there, unvanished; you persist.
The here is undefined, unfound, removed,
the rumoured world, imagined by a drunk,
the shrunken head kept in a sailor’s trunk,
repulsive, possible but never proved,
a nightmare no one says cannot exist.
The paper doesn’t predicate the frame,
the gilt, the glass, the wire, the picture hook.
A smudge can make a drawing worth the name.
You only vanish every time I look.
drawn somewhere outside inside, to a point
where disparate is unacknowledged, joint,
where light is one variety of shade,
but you are there, unvanished; you persist.
The here is undefined, unfound, removed,
the rumoured world, imagined by a drunk,
the shrunken head kept in a sailor’s trunk,
repulsive, possible but never proved,
a nightmare no one says cannot exist.
The paper doesn’t predicate the frame,
the gilt, the glass, the wire, the picture hook.
A smudge can make a drawing worth the name.
You only vanish every time I look.