After the dry-point intaglio by Pandy Aviado

 

                     “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

                             Out of this stony rubbish?” 

 

                                    T.S. Eliot

                                    The Waste Land

 

 

Let’s see.  The artist cannot untangle 

His brain from the pen or brush he is holding.

He must etch or cut his lines and curves,

Every bit and crumb and flake and speck

Must be incised into the material or

Fabric of his art by his own will and making.

The particles of his imagination cannot 

Decohere from those of his creation. 

Take this dry intaglio of what maybe 

A throbbing ficus, almost like the burning 

Bush in the desert. whose adventitious 

Roots have become branches, the branches 

Become roots, each sending curls of buds

And leaves into the thin air, the arms

And limbs of the gnarled trunks

Swarming like green flies or maggots,

Or desiccated twigs and fingers, you

Can hear the hum and murmur of bugs 

And roaches, feverish antennae sniffing, 

Wriggling, famished, omnivorous: 

And after poking and scrounging in the dirt 

(The rubble and sod of garden or aquifer, 

Where ghosts writhe and gasp even in death), 

The tendrils have now surfaced as hands―

Disembodied, but eternally entangled 

in the artist’s cosmic coherence―and they 

Can only clutch at the empty ether.

 

 

Marne Kilates

29 January 2022