A Linoleum Print for Józef Gielniak
Open to the limits of the pointed edges,
and then: torn apart, and a touch harder than air,
fractionally stronger than the resistance of the blade
you relief-sculpted your heartfelt letters.
Linoleum is a piece of hospital floor.
Upon which you planted sprawling gardens.
Cellar rhizomes, knowing they were the roots of stars.
And disease, just a dangerous flower.
The patient rains of your fingers, the summer of imagination,
but the hospital is winter.
Linoleum is a piece of hospital floor.
Upon which you wrote a brittle philosophy.
Defending hesitation before certainty,
before you replied to questions both beautiful and dear.
Linoleum is a scrap of hospital floor,
upon which stand guests.
Mann corrected his Magic Mountain.
Schulz questions the Infinite fecundity of objects.
Dürer observes your hand,
van Gogh holds flowers.
You smile.
The oxygen pipe
turns into a blade of grass.