Finding the Gallery

Original:

But when he passed through the museum’s metal detectors and entered the crowded gallery, he saw that the other people at the exhibit of “Marc Chagall’s Russian Years” were little more than walking ghosts: his mother, his father, preserved in other people’s skin. Glimpsing the side of a woman’s head—a younger woman, of course, but another remarkable thing about the dead is that they are all ages, preserved at every age you ever knew them, and at no age at all—he had to fight the impulse to glance at the profile again, unwilling to feel the sick relief that came with confirming an unfamiliar face. It was easier to look at art.

Found Poem:

When he entered the gallery of ghosts

he saw them.

It was little more than an impulse

to feel the easy relief

that came with walking

through the remarkable exhibit.

They are preserved at no age at all,

with unfamiliar faces

that look at him through the years.

A profile of a younger woman he knew

fought against his unwilling glance-

he remembered the remarkable

and passed on through,

for it was easier to look at art.