#424 - ekphrastic for Margel Hinder’s ‘Man with Jackhammer’ (1939)

 

24.ii.21

424

2.55

ekphrastic

for Margel Hinder’s ‘Man with Jackhammer’ (1939)

 

little objects made of angles

and colour in shadows spun

 

and where is the state?

 

here in his box

this man is the millions

we know they obey

 

looks like an inoculation

out of Depression into a war but

 

hands bigger than the head we are

when once we could believe

stubby Stalin fingers

 

frame to prison alien labour

a shame all we lose along the way

 

an arbitrary making

bent to fit

machine distortion

 

I’d like to imagine a little perruque

the pawprints left in the slab

 

in timber

the flesh

made stone

 

this machine kills fascists too

and that is a relief