Repose (June 99?, some revs., 9/8)

On the plaza’s granite steps
beside the gearbox of a glassed-in clock
its gears of brass stilled for
Return of the Jedi

But in the museum
how fares the spirit of Henry Moore
his nativities fused in gleaming bronze
their surfaces round or sharp as spear-heads
or stone fertility idols

and buried in the figurines
the principle of airstream in a car
new models that hearken to the 30s
with bumps, no fins, nostalgia for the future.

The present condemned to repeat the past
the past condemned to mimic the future.
On a very flimsy screen
wobble dated haircuts and the heroine’s
vestal robes, mercurial, liquified.

Even Darth Vader in Dyna-flow SS helmet,
was once a child who may have played here
snapshot in a department store
with a pea coat and a little Dutch Boy haircut
beside a pinafored, beribboned sister

in which time no transparent clock
had been constructed, in wax or plywood,
time a phosphorescent flow, the museum
matchsticks and broken water mains.

Until a paper flow engendered a spark
a vague idea of plexiglass and granite
sunk in what were deemed ruins, a donut shop
now quasi-amphitheater, by the whorehouse
with a clock propped in its corner.

And what of the scaled-down bronzes
of Rodin and Degas, their repose on each pedestal
like wave mechanics seized in plaster casting?

The plaza is standing room only.
But neither is the museum empty.
The movie is the childhood of the audience,
the haircuts, the flowing robes the future.