At the George Caleb Bingham House, Arrow Rock, Missouri, and: To Each Light of Which I Am a Brother

At the George Caleb Bingham House, Arrow Rock, Missouri

You could say: this is where a people’s art began.Malaria; cicada whine. You could dress yourself upin your wounds. You may walk in the centerof the road, as far as you like. Vanity,to center the composition just so. You smile into it.You wait for it to ask you a question. You could say:the roughed-in portrait on the easel is a prop,a mere prop. Beside the basket of vintage needlework,pincushions, pins & needles rusted into the gay fibers.If you are unable to walk then you might limp.The question turns beneath your hand. It turns but itdoes not break, & here you are. You could say:marry me, pigments sprung from lead, from lapis,from madder (a mere prop). All the blind heroesfrom the past are clapping. The city is clapping, Zionif you like. Whisper your signature into the variation:the new bottoms through which the river once ran.It is easy to imagine hunters here, so why not do it:hunters. Cracks varnished over, you can see themin this late light. The gardeners arrive & then withdraw.You could say art sent them. You could say artslew them. You could pioneer the use of redunderpainting, to confer a lifelike blush to humanfigures, to a young nation. Overspreadingolder nations, yes, the clamor sealed within the image.You are astonishingly not alone, is the message

daybreak broke against the thighbone of a saint.What if you pierce it. What if you make a musicalinstrument of it. What then would you have waited for,yes, I (is it time for the “I”) am asking you.Who have glimpsed this world, & possibly others.Speak with the thread in your hands. Cicada whineupthrust from the depths, into the plane of desirewhich is to say, of representation. You, you, you,eyes shut, eyes wide, make your decision, this strokeversus that stroke, assisted by the glistening hairsof an animal, some former animal. The image alivealive-o as it must be. Here is the body of a pelicanstretched on a strand, here is the body of a crowstretched on a wooden table, here is a marmot, hereis a mink (with a human hand showing, bottom left,as if reaching for it or perhaps as if withdrawing).You may think of the heaven of images, if there is one—you may think there is one. An infinite planeof perfect representations. And every fourteen years,or every seventeen, that desperate clawing upthrough the surface, that seeking. The slitharvested just so. Uninvented because it is closed,as all conquest is closed. Now the docent hasreturned to lock the room back up, & you thank her.

To Each Light of Which I Am a Brother

  Brown Lodge No. 22, A.F. & A.M., Arrow Rock, Mo.

In the disused lodge hall I am listening for the sound of brightness,  which has breadth. Not the sound of fire, which has depth.The candidates line up, as if for inspection.Even in a small house objects (mostly small objects) may be hidden.Light reaches through to where the gavels once lay. Is brightness,  then, a pedestal, were we to approach it.Miltonic light, not bright exactly, but in conversation with bright-  ness. It can pierce milk, assert ancient authorities.Peephole with its handmade cover like a raindrop, a drop of milk,  mercury, or blood. At certain times one would swing the cover  wide & view the other. Admit or deny.Brightness, not the same as whiteness though often mistaken for it  in two-dimensional representations.The sound the gavels made, wood against wood, word against  word.I recognize fire by the absence of fire, & the depths from which that  absence emerges.House by house, tales of houses being moved, by mule team, on  log rollers. Everything here is both palimpsest & tabernacle.The material is the wholly necessary part, where...