Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 12 Number 1, April 2011
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WÖLFLI’S ASYLUM
Is that Doufi, the child of poor and depraved parents,
riding the dark horses? Or, is it St Adolf the Second?
But there, surely, that’s Wölfli peaking up from below the fire!
When the whirling pictures simply won't stop there's nothing left
but to reach for the golden promises that lie whispering,
“Listen up, for I am guiding you through the darkness.
Orpheus has been waiting for you since your earliest breath.”
Yet, we never get there because of the spurs stabbing
ever deeper into the soul's ribcage urging, urging
on the horses of schizophrenia and depression.
There’ll be no redemption, what's done is done
and it will haunt you till you own it freely
with yes, yes I did that, the terrible deed was mine.
No amount of crowding out the canvas with figures
and words can hide the terror of a blank piece of paper.
It is not what you did that made you unreal, unfree, Wölfli.
It was your escape into Waldau Clinic. Yes, yes, yes!
Your art was good. But the struggle, the struggle simply is
not about them against us and it cannot be settled
by galloping into fantasy.
Let’s share instead
a steaming bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup and contemplate
the pitch of the Asylum Band, or the General View of the Island
of Neveranger with its criss-crossing snakes and ladders.
The faces and the scattered eyes and the goat's head
you put there to warn us that living like Janus is both dangerous
and necessary. We must, you say, both see the mutilated child
and hear the music of the spheres, without creating contempt
for the world, or sending out a posse of personalities
in search of Messiahs.
And, so, it is now proclaimed that Doufi the child
and St Adolf the Second - and the horses
are all one and the same; that we each carry our freedom within
and yet we do not.