Series #22 (white)

Oil and gesso on canvas   Robert Ryman, 2004
 
1.
As if it were still the 17th century, when conscious
just entered the English language, meaning secret and shameful: 
 
2.
the whitewash of brushstrokes over black. It was like erasing 
to put white over it, Ryman says, but gives no hint of what—
 
3.
everything we have words for is dead. 
No wonder, Nietzche said, I forget; so it repeats, like a series 
 
4.
of couplets: In Hebrew darkness is not unrelated to childlessness. 
Alone:  this is not a choice. It’s a compulsion. Last night 
 
5.
I dreamt I was a little girl, dressed in white, running 
behind a boy, down a dirt road, 
 
6.
searching for a home, and because we couldn’t tell which was best 
we stopped at any house. It was owned by a blind man.  
 
7.
In Jane Eyre, after Rochester is blinded in a fire that burns his house to the ground,
he is finally free to marry Jane. And in the paintings, 
 
8.
what is present is what matters. And what is present 
is not white paint, but paint that reflects white,  

9.
a lightwave, a stream of minute packets of energy photons—