I go slowly through the Museum
of Photographic Art. The exhibits
come forward or recede, according
to my attention, seeming to demand
a backdrop of music. They’re art, aren’t they,
even if not made with paint. There swells
then, loud in my secret hearing,
Don McLean singing Vincent.
A red feather bursts from a swirl of blue.
‘A colourful life’ says a collective label.
Transparency is vivid, shaping an eye
startlingly bright. Vincent’s coruscating stars
erupt in the night sky, as the song rises,
forms in space and falls, splashing
all the walls, filling the high corners.
‘Hocus pocus,’ the sign says. ‘Picture this.’
Voice and words turn sad. I arrive
at Nagasaki and documents of conflict:
the photograph as witness. Facing the past,
the artist speaks. I look at all the portraits
of dead people, whose eyes gaze back, alive.
And at the graves, the bodies, the ruined
landscapes. It’s all storyteller work. (Think:
‘Vincent didn’t know the half of it.’)
‘Perhaps they’ll listen now,’
Don finishes the song. But I don’t know.
People are still cruel. (I myself
kill certain insects.) But in spite
of horror, in spite of melancholy,
it’s good to take a pause, focus, capture
the unnoticed: feathers, the whirling of stars.
The sign says, ‘Pay what you wish.’
NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Sixteen. We are invited to superimpose a piece of music on a place; also we might take inspiration from exhibits (online) in the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego. Additionally, I've chosen to make mine partly a found poem, by incorporating the following words and phrases found in various labels there (not necessarily where I've assigned them in the poem):
recent acquisitions
red feather
a colourful life
transparency
forms in space
hocus hocus
picture this
documents of conflict
the photograph as witness
facing the past
the artist speaks
storyteller work
take a pause
focus
capture the unnoticed
pay what you wish