Meditation on Comprehension
Cy Twombly, Nini’s Painting, 1971
Our lives are illegible,
why not this page?
Obsession and exploration on an endless loop —
[what are these marks?]
I’m tired of typing the word marks —
I want to write the word word —
[though words are themselves marks of their own failure]
Slash, scrape, sketch —
everything always a trace toward understanding.
Query:
Is it possible to record what we do not see?
Is it possible to see what we do not read?
Is it possible to read what we cannot write?
Proposition:
All seeing is a form of believing:
All belief is a mode of feeling:
All feeling is a way of thinking:
What I don’t understand / still might read //
What I am unable to read / I may still understand.
Cy Twombly, Nini’s Painting (1971) / © Cy Twombly Foundation
* * * * *
Meditation on Direction
Cy Twombly, Orion III (1968)
More wave than scribble —
Why is it that Twombly always seems to be writing with his wrong hand?
a mode
of visual music: emanations, vibrations —
aural made visible:
Why is it the gods are never farther away than when we are near?
Sky-sliced and star-stamped,
descent our shape and our source.
O to live among the livid, the dead.
Everything slanted —
even the path
of the path.
Cy Twombly, Orion III (1968) / © Cy Twombly Foundation
* * * * *
Octet
Cy Twombly, Ilium (One Morning Ten Years Later) (1964)
page scrape sketch sky fear ladder
circle scar row blue white fish
dot dash black wax battle sex
tally spear mark cut paint filth
skin death mix slit slash touch
light loss x bliss hero year
blood sail wind oar spume wheel
spew epic wash devour write erase
Cy Twombly, Ilium (One Morning Ten Years Later) (1964) / © Cy Twombly Foundation
* * * * *
Looking at Cy Twombly’s Cold Stream and Feeling the Heat
Cy Twombly, Cold Stream (1966)
The line,
like the river,
does not know to stop.
Nothing on this earth is straight —
not the sky, the sea, the self, the stream —
Even colors curve,
cold in the light of their swerve
toward the other —
I think of you, Love,
in the blankness beyond the beyond:
our motion the very soul of shape,
the flashing water,
drawing us in —
Cy Twombly, Cold Stream (1966) / © Cy Twombly Foundation