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21 Sept 2025
Steve
Smart
New
Moon
Suspension
After Alberto Giacometti’s
The Falling Man
Cast away on his well-turned falling,
or sighed aside by her casual poise –
gravity fails and falls into remission.
He curtsies in an un-tripped fall,
while his flattened kin stride on in lockstep,
ruling strict parade-ground lines,
like marching pin-head hieroglyphics,
they cannot grasp the absent volume
fenced in time in one skip-slim balestra.
He gangles a bronze periphery,
willow-thin spindles coorieing a trove –
whole dimensions stilled in safe embrace.
I saw her dance again there,
enfolded in negative space, I saw again
that hip-spun pause
of lofted breath.
Behind the poem...
My poem was inspired by Alberto Giacometti’s The Falling Man. It’s one of many of his sculptures featuring his signature tall, thin, striding figures. We catch this particular figure in the middle of a transitory movement. He falls, arms curved to enclose space, making a third dimension of width. He also implies a fourth: time – this sculpture freezing a moment in it. Such encapsulation of aerial suspension recalled for me the privilege of photographing the movement of Scots dancer and choreographer Chris Devaney.