Jeffrey Schultz – XV. The Deaths of Birds

Jeffrey Schultz

XV. The Deaths of Birds

for C. G. Hanzlicek
 

When the realm
Of the image
Yields nothing more
Than gore and the unendurable,
And when then thereafter gore
And the unendurable,
Themselves become
So commonplace
They can no longer
Be unendurable
Or elicit the horror
Appropriate to them,
What at all could hope
To be seen,
To really be seen
As what it is?
I could show
A thousand things
But what could speak
To the matter at hand?
So much, all come
To something
So small as disappointment…
There’s something cruel and vague
About it, and it’s looking to be
The primary thing.
It listens to our calls
And learns to imitate them,
Its sound so like ours.
It flashes like life in the light.
It’s what’s there
For sense to sense.

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.