Jeffrey Schultz – I. Western Man

Jeffrey Schultz

I. Western Man

Because his existence is doom,
At the end of it I will,
After I preside first
Over the solemn burials
Of my human
And animal beloved,
After we have
All of us beyond a doubt
Witnessed this
The end of this,
The frogs gone
And the bats
And more then
Than could ever be accounted,
More still so now:
A machine for the accounting
And the thin whine of hunger
Both in the land and thereupon it,
After all of this, at the end of it
I will, having years
Before used his wealth
To get us safe to this hiding hill,
Will, after life is over,
Fell these woods I call my own
And build myself
Of them a great pyre
And lying upon it
Set it alight, give over
To fire, give what
Of me might raze
The seas’ hypoxic remainder,
Make death of it, just like
His stupid heroes did.

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.