Patria

The Farnese Diadumenos

Collection British Museum

Examine the stone. 

The files have been selected to enable that inspection. I walk with Whit, and I sometimes stand still for what truly does seem like hours, as he investigates a simple frond. I wonder if James was too fastidious, in The Tragic Muse, in his recounting of how a family acquaints itself with art, or if we are all exasperated at the same pace.

Has my eye been destroyed: to be astute, without the gift for learning? Or is there some other word for what my dog does, to acquire and to understand?

The Louvre torso is the greatest find. What a tactile opportunity it is, with wear and tear of empires crossing, this way and that, and fortunes bartering, bidding, thieving, to open up its warmth of pure conception. Here, the Polykleitos original, quite contemporary with Bacchylides, is well evoked and strengthened for traversing 25 centuries. Inherit it. 


Diadumenos, we know you.

        . .  war is not all
death it turns out war is what 
little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home . .
     . . I'm here oh I'm here.

















Then, schooled by a corps of youth
Who gentle the golden grove of Zeus
With softening songs of praise,
I learned that whoever would root out Hate 
must celebrate the brave.

The New York Times
Clipping, February, 1999©


Paul Monette, Here
West of Yesterday, East of Summer
St. Martin's Press, 1994©


Bacchylides
Encomium for Hiero of Syracuse, 450 BC
Robert Fagles, translation
Foreword by Sir Maurice Bowra
Yale University Press, 1961©