so when the light
comes, stay
far into the day
that stretches
close to dark
a constellation
of minutes, hours
that evaporates
in a heartbeat
where all that’s
felt, collapses
into a single touch
just stay
long into the light
of day
Sarah Sze, Shorter Than the Day, 2020
Mixed-media installation
Terminal B, LaGuardia Airport, New York
just to look above
and wonder
how such distant
stars in a sheltering
sky are woven into
the fabric of space
from the beginning
of time, and how
seeing this celestial map
each night anew
is to gaze back through
eons at this now
ancient light
Gianni Caravaggio, Lo stupore è nuovo ogni giorno (Astonishment is new every day), 2008
Installation made from aluminium, talcum powder
this relic from the future (alien?)—
on the other side
of knowing
what is
can only be imagined
or believed
Adrian Villar Rojas, Poems for Earthlings, 2011
Site specific sculpture, destroyed
Clay (unfired), cement, burlap, metal, wood
Jardin des Tuileries, Paris
how to be a bird
at home
in these trees
perched on the edge
of a teetering nest,
with the sea on the wind
the paper rustle of leaves
and branches bowing
as if nodding in prayer,
some believe birds
are spirits of the dead
those still tethered
but kept aloft in flight—
navigating a space
of above and below
of what is known and not—
yet there is freedom, not death
for an airborne soul
unbound,
as fragile as any life
balanced
between chaos and peace,
and that takes just a flicker
in time—
a breath-pause—
to cease
to exist
Tadashi Kawamata, Tree Huts in Bruges, 2015
Triennale Brugge, site specific installation at the Bruges Beguinage
in the darkest heart
of a forest, a turret of stone
with a pool of black water
at its centre, flecked
by impossible stars
sunk deep into
the bowels of the earth—
they were ordered
to tie their own noose
as a serpent wound its
way around a deadened tree
limbs jutting into the bricks
high enough to hang—
the officers with the death’s head
skulls on their lapels, dragged
the prisoners from their cells
to an overhanging platform
their black uniforms
cast in shadows, draped
with sinister wings
by the oil lamps’ flames
while high above a bird pecked
a hammering rhythm, marking
time with the drops of rain
falling into the watery depth beneath
each sound carved into the silence
awaiting them, their breath
sucked by fear as the vice
of death, that twining serpent
ever closer, the ropes finally
hung, waiting to swing
and they took one last glance
upward, a futile escape
the tower open wide to the sky
above, yet what they finally saw
was the light mirrored dark
and endless below
Rebecca Horn, Concert in Reverse (Das gegenläufige Konzert) 1987/97
Multi-part installation at the Zwinger municipal tower, Münster
Sculptur-Projekte in Münster
words
evaporate
breath to dust
and love
as truth
never has to be
spoken
or marked
James Lee Byars, The Perfect Love Letter is I write I love you backwards in the air, 1974
Performance, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brüssel
with just the sky above
below the earth is gaping
not knowing the way ahead
so that I’m left waiting, suspended
for what, I’m not sure
maybe to simply cut loose
and let myself
fall
Louise Bourgeois, Spiral Woman, 1984
Galleria Borghese installation, Rome (2024)
words, inspired
divine, arc through eons
shaped by different tongues
migrating as stories told
and prayers incanted
in whispers, at times
stifled as heresy
yet printed boldly
in faded ink
those words still live
inscribed in heart
and soul, the very essence
of being, belief
always to be heard
never to be erased
Chiharu Shiota, Lost Words, 2017
Multi media installation
St. Nikolai Kirche, Berlin
and the book
weighs heavy
the knowing
too immense
to carry
indefinitely
although
she’ll try
Anselm Kiefer, Women of Antiquity, 1999-
Château La Coste in Aix-en-Provence installation (2023)
a glimpse
that’s all it took
through a telescope
and the boy fell—
into the sky
flying sidereal
having gazed at
the stars all his life,
longing to reach
the edge
of a boundless
universe, impossible
but he was lost
in the love
of wanting
all mysteries
to be unveiled
before his eyes
Wolfgang Tillmans, in flight astro (ii), 2010
Digital pigment print
