Paisley Rekdal
And then he says, Laocoon
suffers, yes; but he
suffers like Sophocles’
Philoctetus: we
would like to bear pain
ourselves the way this
sublime man bears it,
but I do not see him
bearing it. There is the snake
launched at his thigh,
there are the sons twined
in the many hard coils—
one shrugging desperately
at a tail loop
cinched to his ankle
as he reaches and cries—
there are the small,
convulsive muscles
writhing in arm and leg,
forehead so shot through
with wrinkle that the thick hair
curls–torturous,
Medusan–can barely be
distinguished from the face:
all are so disordered
with pain he is only
contraction and grip, but:
It is the mouth, he says,
our museum guide, the set of it
which does not allow him to cry out
horribly as in Virgil’s poem:
all that we imagine
may emerge from him
is an oppressed sigh,
the mind keeping in what
the body wants out so
flesh and spirit balance
to keep each other
in delicate check. Is there
equilibrium? The mouth
gapes only slightly, yes,
but there is so little
real repose: death makes dynamic
what beauty before
would have demanded
stay still: always
the hand outstretched with
discus or basket,
the mild eyes searching
the stone universe.
But this is stone that bears
no suffering beautifully: I say
there is no abstract collusion
between mind
and material: no: Laocoon
revolts with all his muscle,
all his will: thrashing
and pulling up long
coils of serpent: this is not relent
or understand,
this is not accept
what the gods
have planned, the great feet
slipping on their cold stone.
Years ago, my uncle,
a fisherman, sliced the head
off a shark feeding too long
by the ship’s bow.
It was night,
he said, he sawed
at the gills with his fishing knife
until the thick skin
ripped, separated, and the white
stub face sank slowly
under a cold spray.
He watched as long
as he was able to the shark’s
swift descent into dark
until the body rose–fighting
towards the nerveless surface
of the waves to circle
my uncle’s ship once more;
to repeat, exactly,
its last few moments
of action and desire.
What is equilibrium?
The sculptor goes to the marketplace
each day to find
just the right pair
of arms and shoulders,
to piece together
out of all the possibilities in life
one man, one ideal:
he cuts stone down
until all flesh is one flesh,
until he enters it, finding
what death there is for him
inside the stone,
until the face he makes under the chisel
becomes his own.
