attributed to Eustache Le Sueur Study of Kneeling Youth before 1655 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Charles Le Brun Louis XIV and Two Cupids ca. 1665 drawing (study for tapestry) Musée du Louvre |
Carlo Maratti Standing Figure ca. 1675 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Giulio Carpioni Pastoral Scene among Ruins before 1678 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Pierre Subleyras Study of Model wearing Cuirass before 1749 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Hubert Robert The Villa Medici and Chiesa della Trinità dei Monti, Rome ca. 1755-65 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Hubert Robert The Dome of St Peter's from the Janiculum, Rome ca. 1755-65 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Canaletto Piazza San Marco, Venice before 1768 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Augustin Pajou Design for a Statue of Comedy ca. 1768-70 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Louis-Claude Vassé Woman holding a Child before 1772 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Vivant-Denon Writers and Lookers-on gathered around a Table ca. 1775 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Carlo Marchionni Sheet of Compositional Studies before 1786 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Anne-Louis Girodet Sheet of Figure Studies ca. 1790-95 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Anne-Louis Girodet Study of Seated Woman ca. 1790-95 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Vivant-Denon Portraits of Revolutionaries 1794 drawings (mounted together) Musée du Louvre |
Andrea Appiani the Elder Apotheosis of Napoleon ca. 1804 drawing Musée du Louvre |
Achille-Etna Michallon after Michelangelo Ignudo from the Sistine Ceiling ca. 1817-18 drawing Musée du Louvre |
The Apotheosis of the Garbagemen
And they come back in the night through alleys to find us
By the clashing of raised lids,
By garage doors' lifted heads, the swung gates, the bottomless
Galvanized cans on their shoulders,
In luminous coveralls
They follow the easy directions on boxes, scattering
Bushels of brown grass and apple cores,
Old candy wrappers folded around sweet nothings,
And sacks with their stains on fire,
They are coming through hedges, dragging geometry
In a dark clutch of rainbows,
See, the smashed jars
Prinked out with light, and the vacuum bags
Bursting their dust in the night like the phantasms of horseflies,
Through the burning bacon fat
Their baseball caps go flying, their feet
As solid as six-packs on the lawn, the slam-bang of their coming
Sending the lettuce leaves against our windows
Like luna moths, the marrow whistling
Out of the wishbones of turkeys, the husks and rinds,
The lost-wax castings of corncobs and teabags,
The burnt-out lightbulbs pulsing in midair,
The coupons filled out
With our last names for all the startling offers,
Oh see, their hands are lifted by the gloves,
Untying the knots in plastic bags, to catch
The half-burnt ashes raining around their heads,
The crusts and empties,
As the skeletons of lampshades catch at the first light,
They are going back in their empty trucks and singing
To the dump, to the steaming rust
In the rolling, hunch-backed, beckoning earth,
The sea of decay where our foundering fathers
Rubbled their lives,
They have found the way
Back to God's plenty, to rags and riches,
But will come back to us with all we could wish for
In the darkness, singing love and wild appetite,
The good rats and roaches,
The beautiful hogs and billygoats around them.
– David Wagoner (1968)