Poetry Magazine
Photographs
Proof Sheets: 36 Prints
These photographs are the index of an hour,
memory clocked along negative margins:
one through twelve, one through twelve, one
through twelve.
Even in a sequence there is choice,
as when I chose not to photograph silences between words—
choice of the parted lips—
or choose now a sequence out of time.
Scissors: chopped time.
Rearrangement is good:
You are characters in a drama called then.
You are figures for mythology.
I shall make Phaedra blonde, Theseus dark, Hippolytus
blonde—
blue eyes: blue eyes; that will do—
Antigone singing in the graveyard wind,
a twelve-year old who is Jocasta alternate weeks.
Neither imagination nor my willing flesh can move this
hand
one fraction of an inch;
a shift of stance could have juxtaposed mouths.
The fixed frame
is the drama:
Hippolytus at banquet;
Phaedra in her chamber,
behind her that painting blurred
into an omen,
as if Theseus were Creon, Meleager, shepherd, faun;
Oedipus barefoot, hairskin beast;
Antigone maenad, Helen, Artemis.
Only out-of-focus figures move.
Source: Poetry (February 1970).
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This poem originally appeared in the February 1970 issue of Poetry magazine
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Poems by John Unterecker
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Time & Brevity, Relationships, Home Life, Arts & Sciences, Photography & Film
POET’S REGION U.S., Western
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