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Making Sculptures
I smooth the clay on the batterboard.
My grief shouts out a name
and shapes the human figure.
Rounded like the hump of a whale,
his head inside is hollow.
I have worked to the end of time.
Now the grief is simple and pure:
the man will stand overnight like a brave soldier
facing surprise on the indifferent face of death.
The studio's gray people tell
each other about human lives, I think. Pale
and moist, they never fail
at knowing that we real men know
how completely the same
grief that causes them to bend
in our moving hands bends us low.
My working fingers climb
up the armature and down into the heart
of all the cool raku, calling out for the one
now almost live, ready to share
in his own form of limbo
whatever I desire to start.
There is no longer any air
between us: carefully I touch his breath.
copyright new orleans review, vol. 33, # 1
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