 |
| Joseph Cornell - Hotel Eden |
Photo: Joseph Cornell.
Untitled (The Hotel Eden)
c. 1945. Construction,
15 1/8 x 15 3/4 x 4 3/4 in;
National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa.
Source: WebMuseum, Paris.
Visiting the Dead Museum
James Hart
Here
in the dead museum, we see
our
memories arranged in dim exhibition
chambers,
thoughts pinned behind antique glass
like
Cornell boxes, transparent lifetimes limned
in
dolls’ eyes, lidless coffins of wasted imaginings.
From
time to time, agile mummies smile at us,
resurrected
statues nod in favor of our passage,
wink
at us conspiratorially from their moonlit
marble
eyes like frozen soap bubbles gracing stone.
Beside
these displays, framed ivory hued cards
capture
memory’s scripts for the antique urges
all
of time’s hunter gatherers know by heart:
the
hunt is everything, the find a consummation
devoutly
to be wished upon us all who hunger
for
perfected objects to bind us to this world.
Bits
of paste and paper collage the empires
of
emptiness we prize for maps of Babel
before
desire and dissolution drive our human
words
asunder with mute blunted tongues.
A
butterfly stamp becomes one ticket to heaven,
a
legendary label soaked off its bottle enshrines
the
dead poet’s singular solitude inside his own
Hotel Apollinaris, paper parrots whisper to him
syllables
from love’s first Medicean dreams.
January
22, 2012; February 11, 2013
 |
| Joseph Cornell - Hotel Apollinaris |
No comments:
Post a Comment