Standing Next to Andy Goldsworthy at the National Gallery // Erin Thomas
Roof: in progress.
Andy reaches
for the wind with his hair. He has been
sprung by decades
of dangling leaf strings
stuck one to another with spit, cracks
dug in the mud with sticks, and balanced ice blocks
that slipped and shattered in sunlight.
We watch his crew
of British dry stone wallers
bend over a brick saw
and stack shale wedges tightly. Their knuckles
chaff in the icy air that lifts the dust—
“ephemera” of sparkle and sweat.
I envy that physicalness:
the brazen edge of sawing,
the weight of shale, the slime
of rock dust on hands,
and Andy’s willow ribs—his skin
pulled tight from so many
afternoons of wind.
I met him first in a classroom in slides
of ice sculpture, leaf pile,
and cracked mud. Then, I also
sawed stone in dust.
Roof will be a permanent installation.
Andy and I know
That all beginnings give in, but this one
has been paid for, and certainly
will not fall apart. This stone is cut
from the quarry of government facades
These domes are shaped
as a Piscataway wigwam.
The shale dictates what can be done
and what must collapse.
Not even the Algonquian
came first but the stone and before
nine black holes framed by nine shale domes,
the earth’s flame,
issuing wind into us.
|
