What did Rilke mean
«you must change your life»
that a dead god speaks
through a broken statue?
or that the statue, mutilated, is
the god, absences noted--

here in the MoMA the issue is
simpler, most of the galleries closed.
A rope separates me from The Starry Night
whose "careful use of line, space, and spiral
. . . creates a sense of reckless speed." It is
nonetheless a small canvas. The cypress
in the foreground enflames less than
observes, a lonely spectator almost outside
the rope with me. Van Gogh needed a wall.

Nearby trois demoiselles, huge and histrionic
scandalize the room, its neutrality, its spotless
temporariness. The heavy brushstrokes of their thighs
are brass fists-the flat planes of their faces slap the air.
What absence teases here? Art deco furniture
Bauhaus models, an Escher drawing or two
return to book-Van Gogh returns to book.
Only the bawdy demoiselles disturb the silence.

I turn to them, smug as if
to say: Be still! We are in charge—
see, we have shouted these others down
and nothing will ever be the same.