Ian Starsmore
Muybridge’s Room
And so this brute and sweating space
gathers shadows, the printed shapes
of animals, then naked men and women,
their bodies dumpy in the fashion of their time,
the beige and pink parabolas of buttocks,
the swell of thighs measured, the empire’s muscles.
What remains is photography
and, jumping through, come tricks of vision,
pictures of life and verity,
a circus of the real, stripped bare of costume,
free of colour and bangle and shimmer,
the better to see the truth, make things clear.
In black and white, arms and legs, how she bends,
again picks up a flower, rises, takes two steps...
But in his mind it is different;
here each flash reveals her, spotlights
her, for a second, flaring for a minute,
or the ends of hours. The sequence,
always unfinished, glimmers on
the edge of chronology, always partial;
white shape against blue, voice and sparkle
blooming against the sound of the clock
for years after she has gone. Then at last, when
he becomes clear, he sees the space in his mind
empty as a pit and remains there for days,
staring into all the desolation of it.
Page(s) 51
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