Poetry

Untitled

The artefact
The three-storey clock in Strasbourg Cathedral has dials that measure up the minutes of our lives. On the hour, the judge appears, and we appreciate that it is only him we need to appeal to. The clock plays Vater Unser, and all is forgotten until the next rotation.

The guide
And this is the faith of the time traveller. That next year, the same snow will fall in a different place. It is a common story. It was as if the leap day crept into January and burrowed itself between the cells. The leap day would only move if it knew it was being watched, and one Wednesday evening, it began to sprawl and push at the frames of the week like mould. On that leap day, I smoked a cigarette within the slink, and instantly regretted everything I had become. If you find yourself as a child and walk together until both sets of footprints are filled, neither of you stops to ask who is the passenger. Mathematics breaks down on the carousel. Perhaps this is why the workings of the clock were removed—it never once stopped a mind forced to stand against the weight of all that white. The ground remains too silent for judgement and too cold for recognition. On the next leap day, you will find yourself as a child and both walk until the edge of yourselves. Then you may understand you have been given more.  

File under
Snow days

The artefact
Käthe Kollwitz’s Pieta shows her shielding her dead son. He is huddled on the floor between her legs—he is not offered up for a witness to observe. In 1914, Kollwitz persuaded her husband to allow their sixteen year old boy to join the military. What happened ten days later would be continual source of grief and shame. This work was begun in 1937 and offers no suggestion of spiritual recovery, forgiveness or acceptance.

The guide
Speck of two sparrows. The idiot savants recalling the weather. She protects until there is nothing left of anything. Neither set of eyes flicker in response. It is known. His protruding tibias are as defined as the folds in her cloak. If I stare too long at this sculpture, I feel I have been awake before. That this sentience has existed and is surfacing, piling up like the accumulation of everything ever written. I know this is untrue because only the reflections live there. In moving towards any oculus we do not choose what we keep. Love is finding someone on the ground by remembering the way rain falls around them. 

File under
The new guardhouse

The artefact
There have been three versions of Barlach’s hovering angel. The horizontal sculpture traditionally hangs in Güstrow Cathedral and has been described as a memorial but not an admonition. The original figure was condemned for its passivity and smelted to aid the war effort. A reproduction was created in secret using the original cast and hidden in a village near Lüneburg. The cast was later destroyed by bombing. A third angel was created using a copy of the cast in 1953. This is the version we see today. 

The guide
Lost gravity of an exploded star. The air, as incremental and sustained as voice, sets the figure apart and above. It inherits what it remains motionless enough to collect. Everything is as it is, and the sky beneath the angel makes it so. Industrious bronze from plaster. The body is hysterically streamlined, yet the decisiveness of its cast reveals a need to take up the spaces. When it was melted, as it is now, it was used as a barricade. Art students may recognise the face. Her closed eyes display the purpose of her separate dreaming, her down-turned mouth shows a quietness akin only to time travel. Stillness is so much more than repetition. You must have me confused with someone who has somewhere to be. Käthe Kollwitz is floating.   

File under
Levitation

Lewis Haubus