JULIA ORMOND'S FACE

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Julia Ormond’s Face

This is not a bildschön face.

After a night of forced labor
sampling horror images,
I mature and a fleeting thought I get:
I am ready to die to help the wretched.
Stricken by Ormond's haloless face, I say,
“For my voyage, this face is the companion.”

In history, thousands have died
to ensure that such a face is around
for directionless and identity-poor eyes.
We now know, once Ormond’s face is old
a replacement will be at hand, en vivo,
for her commonly decent face;
Victorian, mixed with features
of sniveling romantics; planetary,
with a touch of past Martian life
she once had in dreams.

A face is a transitory display, a flyby.
Her face allows no time,
neither for watching phantoms of past suffering
passing the muster at the penal colony
of fossilized memory,
nor to adjust my soul to its commandments;
I have to capture its wealth on the fly.

I encounter none of the women I loved
in her features, yet I am superstitious:
By a closer look, I indeed see them
as a slide show, as pictures in an exhibition.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
San José, Saturday, February 14, 2004
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Bildschön - Ger.- stunningly beautiful.
En vivo – Sp. - live.