Well-Diggers’s Ass by Van Eyck, 1434


Waves of color eke out from inside,
half-shuttered,
though that hint gets him
no ease as he is,
just a lens across the mirror.

He senses how pale
the world is–-in detail–
a couple with hands unfolding
in the air, a child, immanent,
as if to show there were something to hold

or hold onto, the rest of us
ripe for it, that expanse.
Somewhere, in time–-an age
of ice, internalized,
the well-digger has

his spade–-how little that means, he knows,
then and now, and when the blade splits in mid-thrust,
flint-like
sparks sucked up
in dark winter air–

he goes on, fuck-all,
imperfect form–-a metallic surge inside him, still,
a search for any cavity that might be–
see, nothing, he says to no one ever,
nothing, where his asshole is.