The last word
MOVIE HOUSE
View it by day, from the back
from the parking lot in the rear
for from this angle only
the beautiful brick blankness can be grasped
Monumentality
wears one face in all ages.
No windows intrude real light
into this temple of shades
and the size of it
the size of he great rear wall measures
the breadth of the dreams we have had here.
It dwarfs the village bank
outlooms the town hall
and even in its decline
makes the bright-coloured supermarket seem mean.
Stark closet of stealthy rapture
vast introspective camera
wherein our most daring self-projections
were given familiar names:
stand, stand by your macadam lake
and tell the aeons of our extinction
that we too could house our gods
could secrete a pyramid
to sight`the stars by.
by John Updike
From the Faber Book of Movie Verse
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