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R. B. Kitaj’s “Los Angeles”
Impossible to say he was diminished,
or that his final efforts were unfinished.
Each fallow plane of color, each bald spot
of canvas was the harvest of long thought.
The early work, on which his learning lay
in patches of midrashic appliqué,
broke down to this one solomonic plea,
myrrh-scented murmur: Lover, come to me.
And she, at the expense of earthly things,
returned, perfected, on angelic wings.
The Minor Masters
On Santa Monica I know someone who’ll etch
forms of a hair’s breadth in a rubber stamp.
No molds or lasers: just the human touch.
If darkness overwhelms an heirloom lamp,
head west on Beverly, and east of Kings you’ll find
Pairpoint’s prometheus. If age brittles a book,
on Cahuenga there’s a man who’ll bind
its outcast leaves. Such people make things look
immune to time and innocent of pain,
intact, immaculate, as none of us remain.
Long live the masters whose quaint crafts are holy.
They work in solitude. Now by appointment only.
Plants in Pots
for Samuel Menashe
Calm captives, inch by inch, they make their flight,
and reach the window, bent on seeing light.
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