THE THIN MAN, A SCULPTURE

On page 8 of “Act One”, George Murray’s book of poems, is my personal favorite, entitled, “THE THIN MAN, A SCULPTURE”.  Well, perhaps it’s not my favorite, but we (his children) grew up with two sculptures of thin men in our home, one or both of which inspired him to write this poem, so the title was often in our minds.  We still disagree on which of the two statues were his real inspiration, so here they both are, pictorially, for you to see, and pass judgment on which is more likely to have inspired* the poem:

…

THE THIN MAN, A SCULPTURE

Tall and thin,
a reed for winds to play,
he stands
and fingers final bone.

For flesh to fall away
the moment of decay
need never come,
the essence numb
from word and stone
and senses that betray.

He stands alone,
the minimum of self,
all channels of the felt
destroyed, unknown.

He climbs the steep
catastrophe of bone
toward the deep
impenetrable sky
and fails to die.

…

Copyright ©George Murray, 1976

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

*This poem of my Dad’s was so embedded in my mind, I wrote a haiku inspired by it in 2012, which is posted on my haiku/senryu/photography blog: The Thin Man…