dean rader
THE FIELD
Jorie Graham
                                    On Anselm Kiefer, The Order of the Angels, 1983/84
 
                                                             1.
Before, there is this field.
 
And after, too, we are in the same field.
 
Before, it is dark and we can’t speak yet see it: we stand
in it: we feel our standing like a spindle, turning, twisting
                                                              in its
strange homesickness, strands of the looking out which leak flaxen,
                                                                          from us
blinking in the dark, so quiet, gazelle of furling
                                      imaginings
―oh overgrown eye!―awaiting, in the gossamer of looking
: some supple yet restraint clutter
: suddenly multi-faceted, edges emerging
: one big one at the top, horizontal, like an ending
: crepe-like (incomparably soft) the sides: like wings
: yes, in the field of the periphery (head still―
                                                eyes forward―)
: the sides (just beyond actual seeing), the sides fetched-up with
                                                 coarse spectrums, outskirts of
the betrothal: almost a sensation of regret,
as where a voice, still calling-out does enter finally the
                                                                       inaudible
: and you know they can’t see you anymore so why are you
: still standing her: why: why?: unless of course
you turn your head: there now: efficient: (why the
                                                       sound in the
                                                       inaudible
like a cough? or a spade stabbing soil? a wedge of snow
                                                              falling of itself
onto the snow): there now, you can begin again: again:
the eyes starting the story afresh, bits connected,
                                                        the whole
                                                         philosophical
vertigo molting your glaces―(more and more of them)―off
                                                                             its spoked
long-distanced, stringy, muddy (with what?)
debris―a delirium―furrowed―mudtroughs, mudripplings
                                                                       everywhere―
equality the terror―equality of all seen
                                 things―gaze like
                                 a fabric
dropped hissing through the open and then down, like a stillness,
onto:
 
 
 
                                                           2.
 
So, now, we are in this field and it is the start
of day. It is deep with what appears to be
mud. Actually what has opened the soil and made it
                                                         exuberant,
made it snarl with suctions and tiny, momentary, frontiers,
is blood. Enough blood to cough up
                              the underloam
―and footsteps, and the weight of many bodies, heavy
                                                                 equipment
(grammatical swirlings of
tire-tread, tank-tread―
if there were horses one cannot tell) . . . It looks,
                                                  of course,
 
Now that the bodies have been taken away
Each to its own luminous personality―name and number―
and now that what can be salvaged of the mutations
has been, each to its own purpose, washed-clean, re-
                                                                 built―
it looks (if only the sun would come out) like any field
in which the work of humans has distended itself―site, set,
                                                                     field of
 
visions―there is a bit of cyclone fence (barbed wire?)
 
which the mud has, unswirling, taken into itself,
you can see where its ribs are each now erased
                                          in newly-ribbed
mud, you can see where the mud is joying a pattern,
you can see where six large boulders are holding down
 
the bureaucracy of mud, where its power must, swirling,
                                                      reassign themselves,
slipping upwards in yieldings that become aggressions, up-
                                                                        thrustings
enhancements, furrows and furrows of matter being made to
                                                                              re-place
itself. A new place. Yet remember the wetness in it, how
                                                          it will shape
                                                          the dirt into waves.
Remember the liquidity spiraling up in this heavy
                                                           mediation
and then, as the sun returns (when the sun will return)
how it will harden into the shape of how free
                                             it had been
Remember though what imbues it.
Not red―the soil has taken the color. Not simply viscous―
 
this soil is full of clay to begin with . . . And remember, too,
 
how all bodies, all the sources
 
of the wavelike frothings of this quickened soil
 
have been lifted one by one and claimed and cleaned.
 
                                                              2a.
 
So much blood the whole field was opened by it.
 
And still is open after this time.
 
Remember that the bodies (and machines) were recovered
 
Place them on the field again (27,000), spread out their limbs, rip their
garments, a sleeve, a shoulder―let them catch light―
(so you can see)―then lift them away, one by one, up out of the mud―
 
then come back with the others to get the machines―clear them out―there,
 
you have it now: the field
 
 
                                                            3.
 
Today I am gazing at it in this book. I look up suddenly, now,
a man runs across my yard screaming Roger, Roger―hoarse, large with
                                                                               rage―his black
                                                                               dog leaping
Wildly     ahead      of      him,      staying      so.
 
 
                                                       
                                                              4.
 
In the air of this room, in what slavers under
                                                this layer
                                                of listening,
I can hear, through the speakers, fingers on
                                       the piano keys―
then a pushing (a sound beneath) a susurration of
                                             busy desire
                                             (or fear?)
 
―not a clicking (as of fingernails)―but the pressure
                                                       in the making
                                                       of the thing
Made―the making of the note distinct from
                                            the intended
note―distinct from the imagined note. Just where
                                                  it pushes free,
 
where the hands go into the machine to want to
find and then
                                                to find.
 
 
                                                          5.
 
Outside, smoke rises between the houses. I look carefully. Nobody
                                                                                           there.

Picture
Anselm Kiefer, Die Ordnung der Engel, 1983/84

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