If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface…
There's nothing behind it. I just pass my hands over the surface of things.
—Andy Warhol
I think of Andy slouched at the back of St. Vincent Ferrer,
Dwarfed, as I once was, by arches and vaults
Yet swaddled, in the midst of the screaming city,
Securely in the arms of silence. The smoke
From the censers must have risen for him
Even as it did for me. He wouldn’t approach
—so they say. Perhaps, like me, he enjoyed too much
The pleasures of alienation, or feared their withdrawal.
What lies beyond them? The worst and best of us
May never know. As for me, I see only in glimpses
Not as through a dark glass, but as flashes
From a speeding train car: living rooms, back gardens, intimate
Scenes, fleeting, furtively revealed to us passersby,
Shocking after-images, burned in tired retinas,
Of the life of the world to come.