High above the turbine floor
Of the eviscerated power station,
On a platform jutting from drab gray walls,
Lurks Maman, the seven ton spider
Of Louise Bourgeois,
Bronze legs outstretched,
Sac distended,
Poised to weave the web of the new millennium.
[He] What does it portend?
I ask the art historian.
Is it true, as the artist claims,
That the spider is the spirit
Of her mother
As she wove the tapestries
In their Parisian workshop?
[She] If you believe that,
You’ll believe anything.
Surely the Spider Woman
Lives in the far future
When matriarchy rules the land
And men are bred purely
For gladitorial contests
And sexual recreation
For the ruling elite.
[He] Put aside your feminist daydreams.
That awesome arachnid
May dominate a new age,
When man has retreated to dank caves,
Where he cowers in fear
As the monster spiders,
Bastard offspring of a nuclear holocaust,
Prowl the land,
Hunting juicy tidbits of humanity.
[She] Let’s not be carried away.
The theorists say
The spider is merely architecture,
A redoubtable Ding an Sich,
With no relation to narrative,
Past, present, or future.
But their arguments beg the questions,
Why does it disturb us so?
Robert Motley is a physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and a member of the Princeton memoir group. The sculpture, an installment at the Tate Modern in London, is a work of Louise Bourgeois, a friend of the author’s until her death on May 31, 2010.
