The Artist of Disappearances

The past is cleared of all suspicion, cleared
Of floaters like a shutting eye, an all-
Unseeing eye that needs someone to blind it.
What everybody wants is clarity,
And clarity—in fact, transparency—
Is what our recondite fine art provides.
Take this symposium of historical
Materialists, this gathering of minds.
You see how gradually, how actually
A single mustached Comrade sits, with what
Seems almost whimsy, on a single chair
With his camaraderie of one. You see
Us seen through by his visionary stare,
Inside us only ashes, trees, and air.

Amit Majmudar’s next book is What He Did in Solitary (Knopf). His most recent works are Soar: A Novel and Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”