MIROSLAV TICHÝ

Sunbathes on a roof. He goes on trial.
In 1972, his studio is destroyed.
He makes a lens. He calls the erotic
a dream anyway. He paints; he stops painting.
He photographs women, always:
women in dresses, women undressed.
Thin strap(s). Women, languid
under trees. Touching an ankle.
He becomes an enemy of the state.
Under light state-surveillance
he surveils women in various states,
in various lights. He reads
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, claims:

when I take a photograph I don’t think about anything.
 
 
 

MIROSLAV TICHÝ, UNTITLED

Semi-blurred image of semi-nude
woman, blurred.

A kind of mourning,
in sixties swimsuit.

Her half-body,
waltz-delicate.

Grass rotting around the pool.
Somewhere there’s music.

The subject covers her face.
 
 
 

THE SUBJECT COVERS HER FACE

April. Emulsion in the reeds, like a blouse.
Spoken aloud—blouse—that word a small glass.
So many small glasses in the intimate narrative:
My great-grandparents’ in my grandparents’ sunken,
formal room in Florida, far removed from origin;
my neighbor’s equally ancestral set,
given to my parents in thin paper
blouses. My father visits the neighbor’s grave
for years. I can’t see him in anything but winter.
In colder months, I wear a blue silk scarf
a wealthier man gave my mother.
Now that I am the age she had her third child,

I have devoted my life to sentimentality.