Collage

out of the corner of my eye
I see a piece of cardboard with
sepia newspaper photos glued
to corrugation: arched runnels
cascade into a pencilled geometer’s
cube—a mediaeval device
directed by a scientist’s dis
embodied head. (There is a helmet
that could be an inverted colander
with a spring mounted light bulb
on top. His thoughts fly from it
miniature lightning bolts zigzagging
in steady spherical pulses.) A miniature
angel investigates the interior
from a window in the floor.
There is pencilling indicating
shadows and at the side, scribbling.

This is what the words say:

“Ironically, collage and poetry are intertwined. Picasso,
Schwitters both used the printed materials of their day—
often just typeset. The alphabet, the interplay of point sizes
and face in reference to planes of colour, composition are
the meeting point of poetry and plastic arts, the time when
modern art discovered what poets have always known:
letters are pictures. In fact, the size of the letters, the shape,
even the colour, affect the reader’s sense of what is the image,
not what is written.”