1.
“¡Gracias! Tus últimas pinturas
ignominiosas han matado el arte moderno!”
Salvador Dalí (carta a Picasso)
So the hidden
cosmology of calendars
in fictional space,
born of boredom
month after month,
year after year,
1 2 3...10 11 12
1 2 3...10 11 12
1 2 3...10 11 12
So waiting for kairoi:
moments of movement
when dates and days disappear
and branches of uncounted flowers
suddenly resurrect forgotten trees...
arrow launched
and its forever middle
unmoving and joining
target and targeteer...
surpised glance turning
from exactly the right spot
when Picasso's Guernica
in black and white explodes
in omnidimensional frightfulness
and terror...
This is the unstated word
beyond artful and it is--artless.
2.
"ΕΥΡΗΚΑ! num = Δ + Δ + Δ"
Carl Friedrich Gauss
On the Field of Mars
stands the other Tower
I have never seen
that defaced the other Paris,
with insect arrogance
that refused to lean—
the sweet long-lived Paris
that takes so long to die.
And is this ancient Troy or Hiroshima--
0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21...
0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21...
0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21..?
“Nous venons, écrivains, peintres, sculpteurs,
architectes, amateurs passionnés de la beauté
jusqu’ici intacte de Paris, protester contre cette érection...”
To which wrought iron-hard Gustave
babbling triangles in the sky replied:
Have not the pyramids caught the fancy
of mankind by aesthetic merit?
Why hideous and laughable at Paris
what is admirable in Egypt?
Guy de Maupassant, they say, thereafter every day
ate lunch in the restaurant at the summit as the one place
in the city where the monstrosity could not be seen.
3.
“E pur si muove.”
Galileo Galilei
Does the Tower of Pisa lean away or into the wind?
How tall is it? On which side?
Did it begin to lean from the beginning?
On postcards or in tourists' photographs
why don't the photographers tilt the camera
to show it straight up and down
and the city of Pisa, which took two centuries
to build it, out of plumb?
Has there ever been a post office on the top floor?
A restaurant? Does it serve pizza?
How is it that the builder
is still unknown and that no one ever signed his name?
Of the various candidates did anyone of them
have one leg shorter than the other?
Is the spiral staircase inside left-handed or right-handed?
And why is it hidden--
1 4 9 16 25...?
1 4 9 16 25...?
1 4 9 16 25...?
4.
“Dis Blaise, sommes nous bien loin de Montmartre?”
Blaise Cendrars
Laid end to end a line of a hundred and fifty
accordions
each unfolding to a length of 2.08 meters
will measure three hundred and twelve meters.
How many arms and what arms' breadth
will each accordion require and what songs
will it play? Will the echos cross Siberia
under steam on iron wheels, chugging
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
leaving in its wake nearly a dozen different time zones?
Or (vel) will Russians, like latter-day Fascist Futurists, move
station clocks backwards and forwards to fit the trains'
departures and arrival times?
5.
Les manipulateurs de la publicité, avec le cynisme
traditionnel de ceux qui savent que les gens sont portés
à justifier les affronts dont ils ne se vengent pas, lui
annoncent aujourd’hui tranquillement que «quand
on aime la vie, on va au cinéma». Mais cette vie et
ce cinéma sont également peu de choses; et c’est par
là qu’ils sont effectivement échangeables avec
indifférence.
Guy Debord
It is necessary to be frank:
one thing leads to another.
In 1933 megaprimatus kong,
the last surviving gigantopithecus,
was captured by a film producer
on an island off India.
Kong, as the giant ape became
popularly known, was brought
to New York in chains and put
in a Barnumesque sideshow
as the eighth wonder of the world.
During performance Kong escaped,
seized a woman in his massive hand,
and climbed the Empire State Building.
A squadron of four U.S. Marine Corps
F8C-5 Helldiver military biplanes is
despatched, which, after losing one of their
number, riddle Kong with machineguns.
Kong falls to the street dead.
The woman hostage had been released
on the top of the building and survives.
It is not recorded whether an autopsy
is perfomed on Kong.
Does Kong die of gunfire or the fall?
This leads to the German invasion of France
in May, 1940 and the death Paris on June 14th
of the same year.
As Free French units and other Allied troops
near Paris in August, 1944 Adolf Hitler
orders the German Commander of the city
to destroy Paris.
High explosives are placed at key points in the city.
The French Chairman of the Municipal Council
and a Swedish diplomat who is more French
than Swedish meet with the German Commander
to persuade him to disobey orders and not destroy
the city.
In the event, after fierce skirmishes, the German Commander
surrenders and does not implement Hitler's orders.
No delegation of numerous artists, architects,
writers, and other intellectuals, who lived
through the German Occupation,
intervene in the negotiations to save Paris,
requesting from either party that a compromise
be engineered and that the Eiffel Tower,
at least, be demolished.
How long does it take New York City to die?
Or has it never really lived:
1 4 10 20 35 56...
1 4 10 20 35 56...
1 4 10 20 35 56...?
Why isn't Kong brought to Paris?
And why--why doesn't Marcel Duchamp put a mustache
on the Eiffel Tower?
6.
‘μικρὸν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μετάστηθι’
Diogenes of Sinope
Shadows
like a net
of deranged
swastikas
move across
pavement,
exiled from
the sun,
dialing
the bridge
black,
blurring
the very
river with
new hours....
Apollinaire
fiddles away life
in calligrammes
sticking out his tongue
to Germans:
51015
51015
51015....
At Rome eight obelisks
of solid stone in ancient Egypt's time,
the last standing tall over a fiction:
CONSTANTINUS
PER CRUCEM
VICTOR
A S SILVESTRO HIC
BAPTIZATUS
CRUCIS GLORIAM
PROPAGAVIT
7.
"A lean swimmer dives into night sky,
Into half-moon mist.”
Into half-moon mist.”
Carl Sandburg
In the water
speed is lean,
long distance
slow and fat.
So to Washington—
one hundred and sixty-nine meters,
tallest structure in the world from 1885 to 1889,
and still tallest stone structure and tallest obelisk in form,
but no straight stone all--36,000 different stones and hollow
like a war drum, befitting hasty pudding...
In 1859
Giovanni
Maria
Mastai-Ferretti
Pio IX
sent
a block
of stone
from
Rome
to add
to the
monument,
then
forty-six
meters
tall.
The American Party, or Know-Nothings, virulently anti-Roman Catholic,
on March 4, rioted at the construction site and destroyed the stone.
As far is known, no military aircraft, not even hot air balloons, appeared
and intervened to defend it.
In May
of the
same
year
Giuseppe
Garibaldi,
excommunicated
with all others
involved
in the
Republic
of Rome,
led
his
Cacciatori delle Alpi
to two victories
over the Austrians
at Varese and Como.
This, that,
and the other
thing
led directly
to the
First
Vatican
Council
in which
Giovanni
Maria
Mastai-Ferretti
Pio IX
sitting
on his throne
became
INFALLIBLE....
In the water
speed is lean,
long distance
slow and fat.
And that is that.
18,038 pieces--distinct pieces
of cast iron,
2,500,000 rivets:
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
Voilà—voilà, la Tour Eiffel...
8.
“Un tableau était une somme d'additions.
Chez moi, un tableau est une somme de destructions. ”
Pablo Picasso
So the hidden
cosmology of calendars
in fictional space,
born of boredom
month after month,
year after year.
So waiting for kairoi...
1 2 3...10 11 12
1 2 3...10 11 12
1 2 3...10 11 12
E. A. Costa April 7, 2016 Granada, Nicaragua
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