(with apologies to Galen Strawson)

Bruce on Broadway, born to run and run,

the burr of Everyman whose tales of bars and father

constitute the story of a life well done.

So why does life for me instead feel like a murky mess,

disjointed, pointless, scattered, inconclusive,

never like the lives in songs and films?

For only there is our existence tragic, glorious

or merely meaningful; only there is life a valiant lie

delivered by a righteous standup guy.

I’ve lapped this circuit once before,

and stopped before the girl in Puberty,

the long wrists crossing her pudenda still.

I’ve turned from wanting to protect her,

scanned The Dance of Life from left to right and birth to death,

tried not to see that leering fiendish face lean in,

and of course have heard the Skrik that sounds around the world.

Today the one that caught me and called out from its frame:

the study of the trio on the bridge,

a moment frozen for all time that nonetheless

moves form and matter so all swirls and flows,

vibrates as matter does,

the stilled and staring girls themselves a single shape in aureole,

road rushing down in shooting lines

and all forms molding into one another

as the physics mystics say they do.

I stood intoxicated, psychedelicized,

stood swimming in those lines and shapes

and saw again how all great painting takes the apprehended world

and melts it down to show it as a single intermingled thing.

In three dimensions we’re deceived, believe we are

discrete and solid selves,

and so we stop upon the bridge and scream.

National Gallery, Oslo, February 2014