The earth from above—a cruel place
Where patient fault lines wait
For the crush of rock to resume.
The dirt road zigzags into the dazzle.
The world deserves
The worst we can do to it.
How much I want this airplane distance—
The breath of the stratosphere on the window,
The cold and the second of screaming and the slow whirl down
To a fold in the hills where the lie of the land is hidden
And each day for an hour-and-a-half the sun
Stares like a cretinous newborn
At the snow it will never melt.
—T. J. Clark
T. J. Clark teaches art history at UC Berkeley. His book The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing will be published in the summer of 2006.
