Daumier, ‘Man on a Rope’

Above the nothing that is nothing,

he dangles in forethought,

not afterthought, like Mohammed’s coffin

hanging between earth

and heaven, face darkened

by fear or apprehension,

or merely paint, arms taut with the sum

of his own gravity,

one foot steadied against the building,

braced against the fall

that never comes, though whether

burglar, or acrobat,

or just a man on a rope is never revealed.

Like Bede’s sparrow,

like Schrödinger’s cat, like the artist

hung between the idea

and execution, the man

is lost in the nowhere

that is life and the nowhere not.