BARNETT NEWMAN'S LEGACY
(1905-1970)

When I set my bard's eyes
waiting at the museum
in late adolescence's
estrangement
on Barnett Newman's
color field's
hard- edged paintings
it was only to die and live
again for art's arrangement
from our unconscious myth
in the mature yet primitive
amid these cultural prisms
among his famous minimalist
unspoken drawings
and hidden cardboard murals
and models of sculpture
there is the tall model
of his "Broken Obelisk"
on the shining wall
among his invented "Zips"
remembering the installing
of his painting of "18 Cantos"
and 14 panels
in his "Stations of the Cross"
of Jesus' repented
 cry of humanity
"Lema Sabbachthemi,'
"Why have you forsaken me"
in a motif of atonement,
or "The Wild"
another "Zip"a vertical band
on a  liquid spectrum
of a color creating crevasse
covering a perfect, solid
style or a wavering square
by an oblong surface
of an ephemeral line
on the square canvas.