Slaughtered Ox
Too easy, to take the body as a distraction—
I suppose I don’t mean the body, which, said that way,
isn’t real, nor, thinking on it, do I mean take
in the way of assume. I do mean take. I mean
to lay hands: the sense I’m concerned with now is touch,
as in the impasto with which Rembrandt roughs
streaked flesh and intercostal fat; it gives
a haze like mercerized thread tongued and bitten
unsmooth. The rungs of the ribs—the carnal
pour of weight on pith—the rusted red
of ocher on limestone, which those in the caves
applied in copies of aurochs, now gone, but drawn,
in contrast to the ox, alive. They say those pigments
may have been suspended in animal fat—to be depicted
with your own substance, an ultimate mimesis.
The painted carcass, laboring as vanitas, reminds
us living of death, as the Tomb of the Reliefs—
now I’m moving further—with its painted shapes
(dogs, ropes, platters, swords, gods
all suspended easily, part of the chamber, with slots
incised for Etruscan remains) serves, in reverse,
to prompt the dead: tilting their heads in a question
like the woman behind the pendant, broken ox,
herself dressed in red, herself with white cuffs,
her red and white interiors, her face like mine bent
trying best to come closer, to ask—do you remember us?
