Waterfall

You asked me what I was
doing last Sunday, when
you called and didn't find me in.

I was standing in front of a waterfall
in the Tate Gallery. Not back, like most
people, but close, right up close, looking

looking at, into, this abstract landscape hiding
behind white cascades. I was not sure whether
it was the trees first, or the water, or the shadows

I was recognising. It was all a haze - like a framed
tear- but I clearly knew that the eyes of the land
watching me, lost, here, somewhere in London

were making me shed all my rough edges
to become a soft body full of contours,
ready to step into pounding water

to meet others clinging like me
onto the rock of their identity
in this never-ending, flowing,
falling, falling waterfall.

You asked me once what
it means to be Armenian.
It is quite difficult to explain.


Inspired by Arshile Gorky’s “ The Waterfall” (1943)

Arshile Gorky (1904 - 1948) was born in Armenia and emigrated to the USA in 1920.
He has been referred to as an artist-in-exile, for whom art became a homeland.