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“We believe in no perfectability except our own.”
—From the Vorticist Manifesto, BLAST no. 1
i.m. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Jacob’s Rock Drill pierces through the brain
and splits apart Edwardian disdain.
Man and drill are two, and now are one:
no perfectability except our own.
But Henri’s pieces rattle too and shake
our sense of part and whole, netsuke-like.
Bird and fish are two, and now are one:
no perfectability except our own.
In Pompidou relief is on the wall,
wrestling figures, clinched before a fall;
Lutteurs—they are two, and now are one:
no perfectability except our own.
In hard cast bronze all hardness now replaced,
the soft and sensuous flesh joins love’s embrace.
Mother and child are two, and now are one:
no perfectability except our own.
His senseless trenches death at twenty three
reminds us of so much we’ll never see.
Life and death are two, and now are one:
no perfectability except our own.