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| Francis Bedford Elgin Marbles, British Museum ca. 1870 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Neoclassical Statue ca. 1880 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Giacomo Brogi Sala della Niobe, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence ca. 1860-80 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Triton, Tivoli ca. 1880 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
Death's the Classic Look
Death's the classic look. It goes
down stoneworks carved with Latin Prose
and Poetry. And scholar's Greek
that no one now can really speak,
though it's all guessed at. The long view
contains bits of Etruscan, too,
(as guessed at as the Greek is, but
no one yet has figured out
more than a first few words, and those
the names for fish, bird, water, rose
painted beside the painting of
what a dead man kept to love
inside his tomb). In back of that
past writings that were things, not words:
roses, water, fish, and birds.
The thing before the letters came,
the name before there was a name.
And back of things themselves? Who knows?
Jungle spells it as it grows
where the damp among the shoots
waterlogs the classic roots,
and the skulls and bones of things
last half as long as a bird sings,
as a fish swims, as a rose fills,
opens, lets out its breath, and spills
into the sockets where things crawl,
and death looks like no look at all.
– John Ciardi (1962)
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| Amodio Atelier Photographie Amphitheatre, Pompeii ca. 1860-70 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Amodio Atelier Photographie Temple, Pompeii ca. 1860-70 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Amodio Atelier Photographie House of Oleonio, Pompeii 1867 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Amodio Atelier Photographie House of Marco Epidio Sabino, Pompeii 1869 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
Pompeii
The rich men, they know about suffering
That comes from natural things, the fate that
Rich men say they can't control, the swell of
The tides, the erosion of the polar caps
And the eruption of a terrible
Greed among those who cease to be content
With what they lack when faced with wealth they are
Too ignorant to understand. Such wealth
Is the price of progress. The fishmonger
Sees the dread on the faces of the trout
and mackerel laid out at the market
Stall on quickly melting ice. In Pompeii
The lava flowed and buried the people
So poems such as this could be born.
– Charles Bernstein (2008)
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| James Graham Temple of Jupiter Serapis, Pozzuoli ca. 1858-60 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Panorama of the Forum, Rome ca. 1880 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Temple of Concord, Rome ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Piazza Colonna, Rome ca. 1880 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Capitol, Rome (rear view) ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Athens 1890 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
from Helsinki Window
Classic emptiness it
sits out there edge of
hierarchic roof top it
marks with acid fine edge
of apparent difference it
is there here here that
sky so up and out and where
it wants to be no birds no
other thing can for a
moment distract it be
beyond its simple space.
– Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)