- for Joseph Cornell

Hexagons of wood and glass, scarcely bigger than a shoe box, with room in them for night and all it's lights.

Monuments to every moment, refuse of every moment, used: cages for infinity.

Marbles, buttons, thimbles, dice, pins, stamps, and glass beads: tales of time.

Memory weaves, unweaves the echoes: in the four corners of the box shadowless ladies play at hide and seek.

Fire buried in the mirror, water sleeping in the agate: solos of Jenny Colonne and Jenny Lind.

"One has to commit a painting," said Degas, "the way one commits a crime." But you contructed boxes where things hurry away from their names.

Slot machine of visions, condensation flask for conversations, hotel of crickets and constellations.

Minimal, incoherent fragments: the opposite of History, creator of ruins, out of your ruins you have made creations.

Theater of the spirits: objects putting the laws of identity through hoops.

The "Grand Hotel de la Couronne": in a vial, the three of clubs and, very surprised, Thumbelina in gardens of reflections.

A comb is a harp strummed by the glance of a little girl born dumb.

The reflector of the inner eye scatters the spectacle: God all alone above an extinct world.

The apparitions are manifest, their bodies weigh less than light, lasting as this phrase lasts.

Joseph Cornell: inside your boxes my words became visible for a moment.

trans by Elizabeth Bishop