"Tiny hatches, if you make enough of them, make

 

an entire etching move," you told us while we smoked

 

in the lit cave of your Tuesday 1-2:15. We scratched

 

our pens: dance & film posters, flyers to end the war.

 

In our famous jeans we slouched before your podium & slides weaving

 

the movements & the solo trips.

 

"He was lonely." "She had no patron."

 

 

"Scale extends us & reins us in," you said of the strange Piranesis.

 

"Find the heart of a city by stepping in."

 

My alleys & arcades pressed onto the copperplate of my 20-year-old brain

 

fusing its hemispheres. I hitched to Colmar and found

 

the Isenheim Altarpiece, figures on the old panels aflame, then turned

 

my back on all religions because you'd shown us Goya's firing squad

 

 

& Daumier's gutters where people looked for water.

 

"Movement in a painting is important as Dante."

 

I've looked for Dante's houses, cafés, notebooks, & horse-stalls, & someone

 

always says Oh, you mean The Poet.

 

"The body doesn't make sense by itself," you said, pointing the red-tip

 

wand at the chalky nudes of Ingres. If I am lonely

 

 

in any town whose museum

 

treasures its one Whistler or Bonnard, I stand before the image

 

hear your voice; my eyes

 

un-scroll, I lift

 

again like a hinge.