On January tenth at the Modern,
a painting we liked asked us
to step forward. Down, that is to say,
fly, I mean, as if our overcoats were wings
to follow a riverbank to a canal.
The difference between green and concrete,
sloping and steep, is relative,
but this was a straight line with no nature;
it was absolute, it was immortal,
and it bent to define the invisible.
(Mondrian. See Detail, cat. 94.)
Hmm, Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories
opens to disclose the solid
evidence, also, of a zero.

2

The question is how to square a zero
with actual knowledge, which,
Aristotle points out, is identical
with its object. Say the object
of the words that escape me this morning
(some, put down for future reference
on a Palmer House notepad, exist
at right angles to the paper's horizons).
These words are designed to marshal
art and culture to say you were by no means
Piero's Virgin buzzing with paralysis.
She couldn't grasp; you were out of reach.
The invisible. I saw "a band of dark,
possibly unexamined emotion."