A POEM WRITTEN  ON THE OCCASION OF SEEING A SCULPTURE MADE BY VINCENT HALFLANTS

Lot's wife is said to have become a staccalite
Or a sculpture, made by fate when she turned -
A form fashioned by the invisible hand 
Of history, out of salt, they say
When, terror-stricken, by the unnamable occuring behind her back
She turned.
Lot, we know, did not turn
Lot is not lod, is not lead is not plomb either
He is living flesh, in our memory, still
That goes back centuries and centuries and centuries
To arrive at their Sodom.
Ours is named differently, it is called
Guernica, it is called Coventry 
Oradour, it is called 
Nanjing Dresden it carries the forgotten names
Of more than four hundred
Places in the Ukrainian landscape 
where they burned killed extinguished 
Whatever was found alive
But today it was the figure of a man
In a hospital
The frozen corpse on a stretcher
That was exhibited in front of our eyes
Lying there, lying on that stretcher
A stretcher suspended in mid-air
A stretcher hanging on iron chains
I saw his head had become invisible
I saw it hang down
No longer on the support that carried the mighty corpse
I saw it like the hidden head of a man
I saw it like the head of a cow an ox about to be slaughtered
I saw it on that stretcher
The covered corps its head under the cover
On that stretcher, I saw it
The stretcher suspended in mid-air 
I saw it, yes I saw it
The covered shape 
Of a man
 

                                        Nov. 10, 2008
                              (slightly revised on Nov. 11, 2008)