Eugene

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/atget/index.html





EUGENE
(i)
My streets are empty
because I go out early
and take photographs.

My plates are too late,
mere things; what has happened
has left its mark.

Some mornings alone
I set up my camera
and just keep waiting

for the mist to rise,
for the vacancy to be
a few metres clear:

a cobbled concourse
leading to the Moulin Rouge
where dampness glistens.

Someone said I do
crime scenes, bleached and swept;
if so, the cops aren’t interested.

For artists - who else? -
these silver nitride traces,
instalment stories

where no shots ring out,
and there is no embrace, since
the world has ended.

These are documents
and nothing else. I know Man
Ray – he talks of a journal,

new existences.








EUGENE
(ii)

Sometimes, mornings I’m alone,
passing the Metro, and stop,
set up my camera in vain
for the faces emerging
and disappearing to greet
the soul that inhabits life:

the soul which was there
in the Luxembourg Gardens,
in the mist across water.

I record stone thoroughfares,
entrances machines will block,
the shops they’ll demolish.

My horizon is noisy,
limited by offices.

What can’t be repaired:
the stairs between walls,
full of entry points,

entrances for artists.


+++




Eugene (iii)

I took you still in your trades,
as you presented yourselves to me,
a set of prints from the streets
that you cross every day and re-cross,
imprinting yourselves at the heart
of the streets that you yourselves
create: baker, porter and tart,
peddler and hurdy gurdy man.
I made these pictures of you, and
with you, for you, as you were
each standing on your bit of street,
I with my tripod, as I presented
myself to you, fellow Parisian, graduate
of the School of Hard Knocks; we
were daybreakers on the gymnasium floor.