Tony Beyer
Zone
Tarkovsky got it both
right and wrong in Stalker
using monochrome for reality
colour however bleached
for the zone of the fantastic
while eye and mind think
they know it’s
the other way round
there’s nothing more unimaginatively
factual than full colour
which shows everything
and is thus without ambiguity
the motorway sequence in Solaris
in an apparently Asian city
shifts (interesting to express it
in terms of movement)
between monochrome and colour
because it is a true nightmare
in dreams there are infinite blacks
grading through the million greys
to infinite whites made purer
by a single smidgen of black
each shade unique though
suggestive of all the others
each door a door to a room
that could be any or all rooms
doubled by double doors
toppling through mirrors
colours so particular to their
context the sleeper never notices
there’s seepage too between worlds
and the fantastic can paralyse
rubbish and puddles
weeds and inoperative machines
crucifix power poles
railway lines fatefully parallel
battle debris from an
earlier patriotic encounter
the waste ground all boys
tom- or otherwise played in in childhood
the replanted tree that doesn’t
burst into blossom
because once hope is fulfilled
there is no more hope
Albrecht Dürer
the Prodigal Son returns
to a nasty village in Germany
where everyone wears thick hose
and semi-wild hogs and their hoglets
grovel and grunt around him
then as now these stories
happen again and again
the Knight’s dog unperturbed
by their skeletal follower
strides forward blinded by faith
a filler in the foreground
like those moulded in concrete
in a Chinese garden
St Jerome’s lion drowses
close to the picture plane
Melancolia could easily be
the mother of the man
he observes in the mirror
with pursed red lips
and tight-ringleted hair
he points at the spot
on his chest where the dark
upside-down mushroom clouds
hurt most when he
saw them once on a journey
the earth is about the size
of a slab of moist turf
dug up with all its attachments
and inhabitants and slid
from the spade to the studio bench
Kurosawa
lordships in splendid robes
seated in conference
hordes of soldiers in lacquered armour
like beetles’ carapaces or wing sheathes
but the true subject is the wind
crackling banners’ colours and signs
and horses running on a beach
bronze in the tidal light
About
Trip north
inlets where Maui’s hook
nibbled the coast
before catching the roof
of an undersea house
earth’s veins
blue on the map
awa and ara
a river is a path
Back south
the way one river
shapes the road
a tunnel where
all else fails
twisting and twisting
but never turning back
tuna anguilla eel ål
all good names
Us
wherever we are
hair dislodges
skin flakes from
the back of the hands
our mortal trace
left in the path
Tony Beyer operates out of Taranaki, NZ.
previous page     contents     next page
Zone
Tarkovsky got it both
right and wrong in Stalker
using monochrome for reality
colour however bleached
for the zone of the fantastic
while eye and mind think
they know it’s
the other way round
there’s nothing more unimaginatively
factual than full colour
which shows everything
and is thus without ambiguity
the motorway sequence in Solaris
in an apparently Asian city
shifts (interesting to express it
in terms of movement)
between monochrome and colour
because it is a true nightmare
in dreams there are infinite blacks
grading through the million greys
to infinite whites made purer
by a single smidgen of black
each shade unique though
suggestive of all the others
each door a door to a room
that could be any or all rooms
doubled by double doors
toppling through mirrors
colours so particular to their
context the sleeper never notices
there’s seepage too between worlds
and the fantastic can paralyse
rubbish and puddles
weeds and inoperative machines
crucifix power poles
railway lines fatefully parallel
battle debris from an
earlier patriotic encounter
the waste ground all boys
tom- or otherwise played in in childhood
the replanted tree that doesn’t
burst into blossom
because once hope is fulfilled
there is no more hope
Albrecht Dürer
the Prodigal Son returns
to a nasty village in Germany
where everyone wears thick hose
and semi-wild hogs and their hoglets
grovel and grunt around him
then as now these stories
happen again and again
the Knight’s dog unperturbed
by their skeletal follower
strides forward blinded by faith
a filler in the foreground
like those moulded in concrete
in a Chinese garden
St Jerome’s lion drowses
close to the picture plane
Melancolia could easily be
the mother of the man
he observes in the mirror
with pursed red lips
and tight-ringleted hair
he points at the spot
on his chest where the dark
upside-down mushroom clouds
hurt most when he
saw them once on a journey
the earth is about the size
of a slab of moist turf
dug up with all its attachments
and inhabitants and slid
from the spade to the studio bench
Kurosawa
lordships in splendid robes
seated in conference
hordes of soldiers in lacquered armour
like beetles’ carapaces or wing sheathes
but the true subject is the wind
crackling banners’ colours and signs
and horses running on a beach
bronze in the tidal light
About
Trip north
inlets where Maui’s hook
nibbled the coast
before catching the roof
of an undersea house
earth’s veins
blue on the map
awa and ara
a river is a path
Back south
the way one river
shapes the road
a tunnel where
all else fails
twisting and twisting
but never turning back
tuna anguilla eel ål
all good names
Us
wherever we are
hair dislodges
skin flakes from
the back of the hands
our mortal trace
left in the path
Tony Beyer operates out of Taranaki, NZ.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home