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<strong>TERRAIN</strong>, <strong>two</strong><br />
(photographs and haiku)
Decoratif<br />
How art fails: in settling for sagging<br />
goddesses holding up a sprig of plant<br />
or by the listless lapping of a leaf motif
A Delay in Glass*<br />
When I was young I expected<br />
these towering breastplates of late capitalism<br />
to nourish and protect me. They never did.<br />
*Marcel Duchamp
Heavy Hand<br />
Does anyone look up anymore?<br />
Why bother? There’s only a firmament<br />
of roof pressing down. Not many stars.
Negentropic<br />
Modernism is forgiving. So many second chances!<br />
Stroppings and flanges, parallel planes and edges.<br />
You could always catch up!
Urban Scrawl<br />
Urban scribbling. You see it<br />
with the corner of your eye. If you stare<br />
it scratches down into glassy shadows
Flaccid<br />
a ruckus of brushwood<br />
defers to the axial tree in its midst<br />
from which someone has strung a weak ladder
Peripheral Motion<br />
inasmuch as you find resolution<br />
at the centre of things<br />
energy roils at the edges
Sisyphus<br />
This scholar rock rolled uphill<br />
from the beach to block my present path<br />
how should I resent such intractability?
Ennoblement<br />
symmetry makes a tree hieratic<br />
suddenly, against a thready sky,<br />
a cathedral facade!
Hotbed<br />
not all flowers are soft, lambent<br />
when there are tensions in the garden<br />
already sibilant blossoms get hysterical
Serpentine<br />
armed conifers pulling aside<br />
to reveal a pathway<br />
would it were the road to Cold Mountain!
Tea Tree<br />
what constitutes a tea party?<br />
<strong>two</strong> petal-thin cups<br />
and a bronze table lamp leafing out
Otherwise<br />
a diving bell in a living room<br />
a domed figure looking out<br />
at your looking in
Somnolence<br />
it’s an old piano (it’s ours!)<br />
standing on a mushy carpet<br />
a coverlet nestled over its ivory bones
Archangel<br />
there are so many avowals of delight<br />
in a tangled garden<br />
you need the clarity of an arbour to get in
Bathing Beauty<br />
fluted, petalled<br />
the old bird bath stands open<br />
like a flower
Curtains<br />
one window curtain pulled aside<br />
looks fearful or clandestine<br />
<strong>two</strong> pulled aside looks conspiratorial
Sweet Travail<br />
so much work<br />
painting notebooks in a row<br />
to be broken open someday like a sunrise
Pianissimo<br />
a mute piano, keys clenched<br />
closed as a casket<br />
its music in camera
Little Top<br />
a tabletop circus<br />
with real dust instead of sawdust<br />
cannot ringmaster memories
Holistic<br />
I know this chair<br />
in this noble nostalgic photo<br />
you can’t see the hole in its seat
Persistent<br />
the walls are thin<br />
sounds come murmuring through<br />
like persistent flowers pushing through gaps
Gyroscope<br />
round and round through<br />
the narrowing gyre*<br />
‘till time doth gimble in the wabe**<br />
*after W.B.Yeats in “The Second Coming”<br />
** see Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky”
Restraint<br />
<strong>two</strong> kinds of barricade:<br />
one for rounded animals like hippos<br />
another for diagonal creatures like jackals
Stealth<br />
shadows creep up<br />
on an unsuspecting chair<br />
affronted by its aplomb
Windbreak<br />
the thin green line<br />
the dark phalanx protects giggling<br />
sweetgrasses as well as curtailing them
The Clash<br />
the battle of the trees and the wires<br />
the wet green language of leaf and stem<br />
contending with the dry sizzle of cable
Sap<br />
every spring a tree takes stock of itself<br />
its ignoble thoughts slither away<br />
like snakes of sap
Again, for Tomio Nitto<br />
how about we lower a curtain<br />
on the desert internet and refresh it<br />
with genial monsters?
Cancel<br />
in the west we read from left to right<br />
the past receding the future barrelling down<br />
we ignore the big cancellation
Hanger<br />
a plant suspended above freedom<br />
cries out to its unconfined fellows<br />
in a spume of cottony anguish
Matrix<br />
every mark on an open ground<br />
makes the matrix smaller<br />
like rolling your hand into a fist
Pavilion<br />
this pavilion shows things in filament<br />
flickerings and jingling, wink and dash<br />
firefly darts in the fraying solidity of dreaming
Fullness<br />
a tree carved out of itself<br />
in the fullness of the sun<br />
opens the shunts of its cloistered heart
Hotel Atlantis<br />
an elevation of Neptune’s Hotel Atlantis<br />
a pixel-wall of moonwater language<br />
hollow globular sounds soft as gelatin
Shrubbery<br />
The shrubbery perplex: catkins, loops,<br />
leathery twist-ties, nearly blossoming<br />
knots applauding in sunlight
Switches<br />
eternal tracks iron in the soul<br />
only switches lift an eyebrow<br />
of the momentary
Ridge<br />
there are furtive bells in the trees<br />
there is a gasp of space ahead<br />
what will befall us over the ridge?
Striker<br />
how about we just relax<br />
and pretend this weary tree<br />
is going bowling?
Lyre<br />
a fervid veil <strong>two</strong> wings wide<br />
lyre of green leaves<br />
an altarpiece that never remembers<br />
(for Tomio Nitto)
Artisans<br />
runaway sedges<br />
feel the centripetal pull of form<br />
and start a vase
Timer<br />
the time tree<br />
old Chronos homebase<br />
whispers of endless return
Road and Track<br />
someone came by<br />
someone made a carving with a car<br />
as poignant as a bison at Altamira
Bonbons<br />
hard candy from the forest<br />
arboreal allsorts<br />
cut from sugar and tears
Skylight<br />
bricks of opaque light<br />
build up the struggling house<br />
fragile under the sky’s blossoming fire
Tantrum<br />
angry poet throws chair at wall<br />
wall falls to pieces<br />
chair hangs in space like a bent star
Chalk River<br />
once a meander of river<br />
with people leaning over<br />
before the big heat
Holiday<br />
flowers like schoolchildren<br />
released from earth, from class<br />
bright whispers, an old clamour
One-Way<br />
a tectonic phantom<br />
from the earth’s deep pain<br />
whispers the unhearable
Withheld<br />
the moistening gardener<br />
magically englassed<br />
the plants turn to paper
Lee Ka-sing 李 家 昇<br />
Ka-sing grew up in Hong Kong and lives in Toronto, Canada since 1997. He<br />
was the co-founder of DISLOCATION (1992, with Lau Ching-ping and Holly Lee).<br />
In 1995, Ka-sing and Holly founded OP Print Program, covering a cross-section,<br />
with original prints produced by Hong Kong contemporary photographers in<br />
the nineties. Lee Ka-sing was awarded “Artist of the Year” (1989) by Hong Kong<br />
Artists’ Guild, and the Fellowship for Artistic Development (1999) presented by<br />
Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Selected monographs include “Thirty-one<br />
Photographs” (1993, Photo Art), “Forty Poems, photographs 1995-98” (1998,<br />
Ocean & Pounds, Hong Kong Arts Development Council Publication Grant),<br />
“The Language of Fruits and Vegetables” (2004, Hong Kong Heritage Museum),<br />
“De ci de là des choses” (2006, Editions You-Feng). “Time Machine” (2021, with<br />
haiku by Gary Michael Dault). Recent sequential photo work released in book<br />
form: ”CODA” (2020), “Diary of a Sunflower Book Two” (2022), “Songs from<br />
the Acid-free Paper Box” (2022) and others. Lee Ka-sing’s work is in private<br />
and public collections, and in museums such as Tokyo Metropolitan Museum<br />
of Photography, M+ Museum, Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Hong Kong<br />
University of Science and Technology.<br />
Gary Mihael Dault<br />
Having spent most of his professional life in Toronto, as a painter, university<br />
teacher and art critic (his visual arts column, Gallery-Going, ran in The Globe<br />
& Mail for fourteen years, a sojourn he now regards as essentially purgatorial),<br />
Gary Michael Dault lives with his wife, artist Malgorzata Wolak Dault and<br />
their seven cats, in a greatly cherished Victorian house (called Swan House<br />
because of the stained-glass swans bedecking it) in the town of Napanee in<br />
Eastern Ontario. Dault is the author of numerous magazine articles and gallery<br />
catalogues, as well as a dozen books about the visual arts. He has published<br />
ten volumes of poetry, and has written three television documentaries, all for<br />
the late Sir Peter Ustinov (the most ambitious of which was a 6-hour miniseries<br />
titled Peter Ustinov: Inside the Vatican). Dault has exhibited his own paintings<br />
many times, most recently at Verb Gallery in Kingston, Ontario. He has been<br />
contributing regularly to the online Monday ARTPOST for over a decade.