The Disappeared
entablature, missing elements, details
that found the architect's practice
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a disappeared part spirit to doorway's cornice
column of all these unravelled cities
(client more than satisfactory and anyway we are
overwhelmed useless )
run-after city all this belonged
to us ...
we walked through the streets arm-in-arm
method:
remarking how
in memory the physical world
is not ours
for
reflex: a photograph
itself distorts shadow
and real value
the studied object at that synthetic level forms in space such as doorways ...
but the noise of radio waves, bottles shattering ...
all those green parrots gone wild
(screeking cloud of them hurtling by)
Deep signs in the form of our cities' exhausted daily craftsman
never reached Silence of the noisy and forced Houses
with littered causeways Submerged city roughly put
aside with slight regret Ecstatic tolerance for the shiny missing dead
Corner solution, etc. relatively small & singled
out because it can be measured reference to whatever is visible /
axial
digital pencil laws held at point of disappearing in plastic value not merely
schematic Peculiar, for we can still see canonical
elements of the classical language even here, at the point of disappearance
and (embellishment) facade techniques bricked arch projecting
pilasters slightly columned attic with hang-out balustrade washing on line Egyptian
cotton shirts &
handcut table linen (old and soft) the crossed arena yet wide
... green parrots loose between buildings ...
Initially rolling forward
as sculptural coincidence
it evenly astonished us,
this pleasant absent mind
Opposed aristocratic bias,
Stendahlian city moment,
unitarian re-use
of abusive marbles
"The Rome of the 1931 plan"
close to the ear
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nest plan : a city as long as a long building
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moulding^ window^ stair^
small lobby cautiously abandoned
unaffordable threshold of a landing never reached
alleys of places (we have lost their names)
so-called baroque time parrots slashing
through curved light bent and wrinkled
in the beloved unadorned
Rome [1995-2000]
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*
"The Disappeared" originally in 20th Century, a+bend
press/chapbook series, n. 37, 2000.