Ideographs
( a photograph of China, 1905)
The small scaffolds, boards in the form of
ideographs, the size of a person,
lean against a steep wall of
dressed stone. One is the simple
shape of a man. The man on it
is asleep, his arms nailed to the wood.
No timber is wasted; his fingertips
curl in at the very end of the plank
as a child's hands open in sleep.
The other man is awake- he looks
directly at us. He is fixed to a more
complex scaffold, a diagonal cross- piece
pointing one arm up, one down,
and his legs are bent, the spikes through his ankles
holding them up off the ground,
his knees cocked, the folds of his robe flowing
sideways as if he were suspended in the air
in flight, his naked leg bared.
They are awaiting execution, tilted against the wall
as you'd prop up a tool until you need it.
They'll be shouldered up over the crowd and
carried through the screaming. The sleeper will awake.
The twisted one will fly above faces, his
garment rippling.
Here there is still the backstage quiet,
the dark at the bottom of the wall, the props
leaning in teh grainy half-dusk.
He looks at us in the silence. He says
Save me, there is still time.
