An Economic Value sonnet (with no Volta) for Joseph Beuys
to tallow-cream slabs of animal fat. to moulded chalks & life-sized stacks
of felt. to a reconciliation with brown. to kerosene burns, honey, horse-hair
roughs. to blankets soothed by blanket-stitch & the gentle invitation
for body. to everything the colour of Crimean steppes
without the disaster of shot. to the healing way
of gold. to coyote-talk, sulphur, leather, crash, to open-cage
conversation. to blackboards & wolf to an organic inevitability
& cure. to hospital straps, hammers, the axe to a wooden Ukranian sled
with fixed measure of humped lanolin flax. to matters of blood, planes,
equations, horn. to a unisex sling & felting belt. to wool. to altruism.
to wax. to all linings of iron parts who embody (and care for) the upper
conceptuals. to consecutive nights in the corset for life-sized hare
& 8 perfect hours in a backrest (for a fine-limbed person) in a field.
to all the hare-types of the world & to the blessing thereof