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The Cicerone Feeling the Rodins
(for M. B.)

J. Quinn Brisben 21 AUG 2004

His partially sighted friend has permission to feel
The Rodins on the parkway in Philadelphia and
The cicerone, guiding her, has scrubbed his hands
For the same privilege. They start naturally
With The Thinker, cast many times, seen by
The cicerone in Tokyo, vandalized in Cleveland,
Below ground in the Paris Metro, underneath
Another casting in the artist’s studio which
The Philadelphia casting replicates, a cliché
That somehow has not let fame reduce
Its power, now felt, thinking with massive
Head on massive workman’s hand, thinking
With every articulated muscle, rough in
The bronze, complete but unfinished, right
Elbow on left knee, deep-set eyes that are
Looking inward, all features strong, bulging
But nothing protruding, all body parts clothed
Only in thought reinforcing all other parts;
Probing and gliding hands on surface and
Crevices, hands reading as well as eyes.

On to portrait busts: Bernard Shaw
Confident of what he is so eager to
Become, in a dialectical dialogue
With the devil, putting his entirety
Into eyebrows and unspeaking lips that
Speak anyhow because hands understood.
Father Eymard, who told Rodin to return
To the world, the classic saint’s face
That his hands found, and their hands find,
Showing the great gift early, and Balzac,
Colossal head embodying a teeming world,
Rough-hewn Clementel, one last portrait as
True as any in over half a century.
After more hours spent felling the six
Burghers of Calais, all marvelously themselves,
And careful study of the anguished, clenched
Hands, and the decaying yet perfect old
Woman who may be the helmet-maker’s
Once beautiful wife from Villon’s poem,
They give their hands a rest and try to
Put at least a few things into words:

“He was nearsighted,” the cicerone says,
“Which got him out of the army during
A bad war; everyone who knew him says
He was always kneading clay, always
With his hands on something. These things
Were meant to be seen, yet created by
Touching, the way we have been doing.
He had a great ancestor, Michelangelo,
But was different, knew better from
Great experience how the tits were
Attached for one thing, but shared
The same sense of primal creation and
Destruction and the terrible beauty of
Absolutely everything and everyone.
He shocked people of course but was
Popular in his later years but never
Compromised by popularity, containing
His own time, and past and future, too,
Which makes him unique or nearly so,
All fragments complete, all stillness moving.



Scars Publications


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