Ballroom Marfa Art Fund

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R. Michael Berrier on “The Desert”

21 Oct 2014

Graham Reynolds,   October 4,  2014.   Photo by Jennifer Boomer.

We recently received this poem from artist R. Michael Berrier about Graham Reynolds’ performance of The Marfa Triptych: The Desert.
It’s a lovely tribute: many thanks to Berrier for sending it to us.

For more photos of the performance, head here, and stay tuned for part three of the Marfa Triptych, an opera about Pancho Villa, in 2015/2016.

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West Texas towns peter out.
The blacktop turns to caliche.
In the end, one last house.
The garden fence.
And then the vast emptiness.
Of West Texas,
Of Mimms Ranch.
Of the desert.

And so we meet at that edge of reality.
Gather with strangers,
And ride in yellow school buses.
Along the ranch road until we stop,
And look up to the ridge.
Something happening there on the Marfa Plateau.

And we walk.
The light is fading, not fast.
We see,
The perfectly round architecture of concrete.
A smooth bench, an alien circle.
And inside, Graham stands among the instruments,
From which he will pull a cacophony,
Edging to serenity,