Caleb Klaces

A lot of the painting here is painting over. Can everyone at the back hear over everyone? Everyone is a blast of light seeping across the film. All day high toothy windows whiten in flashlight. We are much like we were: five times a day. Things don’t change that much in five centuries. For ten centuries before it was faces. Those were faces, yes. They were angels. The gold mosaic is as fine as an angel’s velvet wing. The Christian building is spongy yellow, ochre, gold.

A translator who has a phobia of moths spent three years translating a book with a moth motif. It’s ironic, she has said, that she knew more about the moths than the author of the original, who was merely fascinated. The translation contained a greater variety of moths than the original, drawn from suggestions she had made, some of which were in fact too perfect and changed back before it went to print. Her moths, the ones that were too aptly named, meant too much, her moths that she hated, where are they now? The same place as all the versions of people that have been undressed and slept with, in lieu of the people themselves, by others. That must include a version of almost everyone, lots of versions of some people, some only a flutter, animated then decided against.

Frosty, green through gray rising steeply, top of the bank a big top, red with a sign, misty, fantastical on the walk to school. “My sister can’t express herself properly. Imagine if those performers were stuck in their caravans forever. If round the back of the big top the doors were locked. That’s her. She’s a trapeze artist, lion tamer, cramped clean-faced clown drinking tea, practicing tricks, movement through frosted windows. Language is her caravan on bricks, with tiny little windows in.” At the weekend he and his sister stood on the frosty bank beside his metaphor. She read the poster carefully, got them sat down in good time and at the back. The trapeze artist, lion tamer, freshly-made-up clown filled the top with a noise he could go on translating forever. Walking home she opened her chest: “I liked the mime best.”