These Pieces

                                        adjust the air                                             or itspressure the space around them where                                             lines meet

                                                  sometimes andsometimes not who knows how or                              why, really                                        it's happening here, just so                    through this poem                                             of a room we roam                                        inside ourselves, these stanzas

Is it beauty                                        buoyed                         up or                                   ungainli-                              ness itself as such                                        that holds us here                                                                 &

                    what's                              holding this one                                             there                                 above us?

Hmmm—

not clear at all but clearlysomething                                   beyonditself

                    Neither rightnor wrong, not evenleft                              exactly          out     or—

just the sprawling     soaring falland call of

all of it

                    and the color: how                                        delicate                    is that

                                                  slung

                              piece of plywood                  painteda once-                    crushed Paris                                                  blue cutting into                                            the lime view                                         at an angle                                                  to the off-                                            white wall proposing—                                                    This                                            is how                                      it is in relation                      to that and                                              the beyond                                            any gum-                                              pink

                      skin                                            to begin with

Floating motes ofpunctuation                              or tilted                    syllables in the          sentence of our walkingaround and through them thinking

of things,for instance, with Hopkins—

                    "Say, beauty liesbut in the meet                 of lines,"                              or "careful-spacedsequences of sounds."

Are these songsof degrees                       increments                  (in their way)of an inter-                            rupted descent

or broken descant

                                strung from fishingline or guy-                           wired (like words) hoveringin a breeze within that                                               playing these beams                                     and cords like chords

It's not a linearnarrative like a novel, but                                you can definitely see itmore the way you could reada part                                 of a poem—one                       part of a poem can besignificant                                          in itself.Poets might          disagree.

Sly,a little     wily, and why               not

who's to say itisn't sublime

or onlyabout a pitch and dis-               tribution of certain     values just that something

more we're always     falling into or forand possibly from havingfailed               to reachit or for it

               (slipping)

thought's projection     into spaceweighted with waiting               almost defying

gravity's say in the whole

materof floors and choreo-     graphed boards          a set of planks or long     box blocks and a lozenged                         slice of spruce…

its unfolding                    recomposing                    at once itself

          and, yes, youtoo, viewer, reader, hanger-                                        on to what's          been hung areinstalled within this                    installation site-specifically          and oh so perfectly                              pitched inits ambivalence

O

                    Yes—

Oh

                                        No,                    not thisshadow                         longer than the                                                            joy which is                                                  just that—                                                                      Yes                                        Joy                                              and                         another collap-             sing into a                            crouch to holdon or leap             up to shout with moreof that                          same uneasy ec-                                    static (moving, why?)delight—

                                    Uh-oh,

                          not that

                                               Yes                          that                              No-                            Yes-                              tasy's limbs

bronzed beneath those sky                                                  blues is why

Go figure, the figures seem to                         say—in their almost                                        swaying

how it is                         that what we mean                              is what we stand                         between,                                   always                              an after and then                                   whatwas before          that        always                                        at least

                    two things come                    together (or more)                                        to form—

                    all that abstraction, it's                         so human.

For Joel Shapiro, sculptor