Suzanne Cleary
Almost Away
after "Old Gold Over White" by Mark Rothko
Two squares floating
on a peach-colored ground,
one
the gold of a copper clothes-kettle,
the other
the green-white of sweetpeas,
color without object
becomes color as object,
planes become places:
a frost-covered lawn,
one square of the plaid blanket
a man keeps in his car trunk.
There must be a way to live
without being in the world,
without being myself-in-the-world.
All the edges are hazy,
seem to tremble,
the small movements
of emphasis, erasure.
Inside, mottled, gauze-like,
the brushstrokes are visible,
the hand, one could say,
present,
its thinking
present, product.
It is not enough
to be productive
but to understand you have been
so. I am looking
for the place of importance,
the plane
of standing barefoot in wet grass,
breath taken
almost away
with the coolness.
There must be a way
to be free of the body,
free of scale,
the world of the painting entirely
spirit, though texture
implies touch,
implicates
the desire to touch.
There must be a way
to be free of the self
free of seeing oneself
in everything,
where it does not belong.
from Keeping Time, Carnegie Mellon 2002.