Hands (Two)
14th C., Bronze
Thailand
Philadelphia Museum of Art, third floor
Two bronze hands the body—the arms that separated them gone— like scoops, like wings like boats— they form the earth-touching gesture the earth gone.Crazy
“Repair is never perfect.”
Nick Lane
Crazy, literally, I am reading a book (Transformer) of deep chemistry, biochemistry: how we continue to live, how we come to die. Filled with little diagrams, reclining figures, some- times they stand up and dance, totems of metabolism:
the Krebs cycle, Krebs reversal, the Calvin-Benson cycle, path of carbon in photosynthesis. Crazy I say because once I flip the page, the formulae the wriggling figures lose their balance—and their protons—cease their dance, drop their meanings.
A hundred billion trillion reactions a second—crazy to understand cancer and ageing, I’ve underlined and starred each leaf of paper to reread, pour these words and pictures into my brain— no use—my mind’s a blank, good old tabula rasa. But I do—I do turn back again, still stubborn for this knowledge.
Pinch Pot for Four Hands
for Jan Goldstein
Two women sit side by side in the late afternoon sun. Light touches their hair silver, elongates the shadows. In their hands two globs of clay dug from nearby ground. Parched and pounded into powder; new water added; the mess pressed through a fine mesh sieve; blended with sharp blades to a colloid paste; slick and gluey, the original earth in knowing hands.
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Sitting beside you with your knowing hands, my hands know what they haven’t been taught. We could have been shelling peas, knitting, telling stories, the ease with which my hands take your rhythm and strength, my thumbs like yours press clay from the center, form a hollow the cup will surround, standing and drying, keeping the shape we gave it. And then fired, holds a drink, a beverage, an elixir, quenches the thirst of the maker.
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Now back to the lesson of wedging. Trained hands with smooth, blunt fingers push and turn the clay, push and turn as my hands follow yours; in tandem our four hands driving the spin of this wild earth.
Poiesis
Anne Becker is author of three books of poetry, Human Animal, The Good Body, and The Transmutation Notebooks: Poems in the Voices of Charles and Emma Darwin. She was Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, MD, for four years and then, Poet-in-Residence at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center. Her poems printed on her own handmade paper have been exhibited in the US and Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. She is a poetry editor of the Mid-Atlantic Review, an arts journal based in Washington, DC. Always interested in collaborating with other artists, most recently, commissioned by Carl Banner, director of Washington Musica Viva, she wrote a long poem “ The Jamie Raskin Oratorio,” which was set to music by composer Noam Faingold. This premiered September, 2024, with Carl Banner on piano and Chris Royal playing trumpet accompanying her reading.