Back at it: April's fool

After Seeing Gerhard Richter Painting

Paintings are mortal enemies, says Richter

quoting Adorno, and poems too will kill you

if they roam unsupervised, untethered,

flying off along yon ecliptic with all they know,

know about you. Truth! Gad!

Maybe

it’s better to stop all this you mutter once

in a while, April nights when the thought squeezes

like a rat through a sliver in the baseboards

in the house built of words, always only words

so circumscribed, bound to 24 marks and

one antipodal Hippocratic oath: first, do harm –

that’s how you know it’s a word, a real word.

Another thing Richter says at movie’s end,

a line the director knew to save for last,

to remind us why we’d paid and offer

permission (the world loves to

hate its artists): It’s fun.