" To Max Jacob Reflected in the Eyes of a German Shepherd "
When I hear anyone talk of culture, I reach for my revolver.
-- Herman Goering
Apollinaire is already dead, and that macho pig Picasso
lives free in occupied Paris, protected by his wealth and fame,
audacious enough to walk the streets shoving prints
of Guernica under Nazi noses as he shouts:
“How could you do this, how could you do this!”
Word of his exploits reaches you even here
in the Drancy concentration camp barracks
through the mouths of other prisoners
returning from work detail as you sit on the top bunk
fingering the yellow star of David emblazoned on your armband.
For years it was always Picasso and Jacob,
Apollinaire and Jacob, or your surrealist cousins’ printing
demeaning slogans like: “Read Reverdy, Don’t read Jacob.”
It was never Max and someone else,
never read Jacob for Jacob, never just art for art’s sake
without the self-aggrandizement and self-promotion.
Think back to the days of 1901 when an unknown artist
from Spain sat in your apartment drinking red wine
as you read to him from a crinkled manuscript pulled
from your battered trunk and heard him stammer
in pidgin French— why keep painting,
when you’re already the best poet in France.
Think back to the birth of cubism,
how you watched the slashing brush strokes of color,
this tornado of movement from a corner chair
in the studio, writing off and on in a blue notebook,
perfecting your own technique of showing both sides
of your face in profile at the same time.
Think back as an apostate Jew to your vision of Jesus
on the walls of your apartment building,
the simple words he spoke that changed your life,
the way his body moved through
the imperfections in the wallpaper
as his touch lifted the suffering from your brow.
Think back to your arrest by the Gestapo
in the monastery garden, how you received
those jackbooted thugs with a Christ-like calm
as if the charges were just a conversation among friends,
the trip in the black Mercedes an outing in the country.
Now Picasso roams the streets of Paris a free man
while you sit here on your sweat-stained mattress,
a pale, anonymous prophet of hope
blessing this audience of shaved heads
gathered before you, eager to know everything about him.
As the stories spill from your lips, their faces
carved out of a grey, living marble begin to brighten
and you slip in a joke about how he called you Sancho,
Sancho Panza and tomorrow your Don Quixote will charge
through the mist to slay these fire breathing dragons.
© 2004 Jim Doss
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