As I Stand in the Museum Hall

It all becomes about death, I think,

as I stand in the museum hall;

all this art, just burdens we carry

for the bearers who've gone on.

We squint at glyphic forms and colors,

making questions and answers of it all,

mistranslating these impassioned portals

of beauty and horror, which outlast their finders, seekers, makers -

whose names are held captive in little descriptive plaques -

epitaphs beside their heart-windows

of oil and stone.

And so it all becomes about death.

As I stand in the museum hall

I wonder if things with my signature will hang

In reverberant spaces, to be looked on with whispers, wonder, and doubt,

when I am in the ground, same as John Singer Sargent and Paul Cezanne.

And I wonder if it means anything at all,

That I am looking at a scene which a now-buried man

thought worthwhile, once.

See, it all becomes about death!

(and that which,

for each other,

we carry

beyond it.)