The winners of this year’s Pritzker
Award for architecture are a Japanese
team, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.
Their recently completed learning center
at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne
is a sad flat cratered slice of moon
inside of which the lunar abstraction
proceeds unhindered by any object
of interest, or, indeed, any differentiation
into rooms where one might privately
study or daydream or make out.
No dreaming allowed in this bright white
airport where your every step has been
engineered for maximum visual access,
so that you can become another plastic
white chair.
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Sylvia Plath captured the mood.
The Moon and the Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness——
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.
March 29th, 2010 at 5:12PM
Strong, strong entrants for the Dehumanization Derby. It might make a good Swiss cheese headquarters, though.