Pulped for Posterity

A recent innovation in Austria, it is cabled, is the erection of cardboard replicas of proposed public statues in order to test public opinion before the permanent statuary is decided upon. If the figures meet with popular disapproval they are scrapped.

When I am dead, if you, perchance, respect me,
Then limn my form in perishable card,
And in some city thoroughfare erect me
Where people come to stare, but not too hard,
And if, before the stuff has time to perish,
One comes to say, “I’ve heard about that bloke,”
I, in some other realm, may haply cherish
The precious words and thank the man who spoke.
Oh, cut me out of cardboard with a scissors;
And if, before I reach the rubbish bin,
I have not annoyed the quibblers or the quizzers,
You might reasonably try me out in tin.

And when the wind and rain have worked their treason
Then, with imperial Caesar’s mortal clay,
Let my frail effigy serve too, in season,
To “stop a chink to keep the wind away.”
And so with many a man far worthier, greater,
Whose fame seemed set upon a deathless throne
Only to be forgot in ages later
When memory failed to outlast the stone.
Oh, cut me out of cardboard and enthrone me,
And if, for seven days and nights I last,
And a patient public does not come to stone me,
If you care to, you may chance a plaster cast.

I rather like this cult for cardboard figures;
The more one ponders it the more it seems
Appropriate, spite all climatic rigors,
Either to hero’s fame or sculptor’s dreams.
Take Epstein’s stuff. Figures in two dimensions,
Front elevation, for who dote upon his genius;
While those who voice dissensions
Could walk around and view the stuff end-on.
Oh, cut me out of cardboard and upraise me,
And, if to Coventry I am not sent,
If one small boy, perchance, should stand and praise me,
Then you might try the reaction to cement.

I sometimes think stone is too precious truly,
Bronze far too permanent for human clods
Whom men rush in to celebrate unduly:
Immortal stuff is for immortal gods
Carved by great artists. Let the celebration
Of man be in such stuff as may be pulped;
Reserve the rock for glorious inspiration:
Venus to pose, Praxiteles to sculpt.