Photographs

Proof Sheets: 36 Prints

These photographs are the index of an hour,

memory clocked along negative margins:

one through twelve, one through twelve, one

through twelve.

Even in a sequence there is choice,

as when I chose not to photograph silences between words—

choice of the parted lips—

or choose now a sequence out of time.

Scissors: chopped time.

Rearrangement is good:

You are characters in a drama called then.

You are figures for mythology.

I shall make Phaedra blonde, Theseus dark, Hippolytus

blonde—

blue eyes: blue eyes; that will do—

Antigone singing in the graveyard wind,

a twelve-year old who is Jocasta alternate weeks.

Neither imagination nor my willing flesh can move this

hand

one fraction of an inch;

a shift of stance could have juxtaposed mouths.

The fixed frame

is the drama:

Hippolytus at banquet;

Phaedra in her chamber,

behind her that painting blurred

into an omen,

as if Theseus were Creon, Meleager, shepherd, faun;

Oedipus barefoot, hairskin beast;

Antigone maenad, Helen, Artemis.

Only out-of-focus figures move.

Source: Poetry (February 1970)