Victor Hugo--A Portrait

Victor Hugo--A Portrait


making art out of his morning coffee grounds,
ashes & matchsticks


1

A black & white world, more beautiful
than any scorched by color.
But the beauty here is finite –
immediately an act of the imagination,
not as we see (in color) but transformed,
by subtraction, into a foreign world.

2

I am aware of it -- & you – but you,
I dare to think, are far from it –
out of the picture, cut from sight.
This is another subtraction –
the person who should be there
but who is missing – truly.
For this I bite my hand & I return to sleep.

3

Scarce & so received
as to be harmless,
languishing,
his hands held open,
gilded, like a saint.
Who is this cavalier?
I hesitate
to name him – one
without a name.


Jerome Rothenberg

Posted over on Poems & Poetics