You say words render the human more faithfully than an unthinking image. Show me, then, the words for Falconetti's face. You have your description: now refine to one word, one syllable, one stroke, and carry the weight of her gaze. The datum of her misery calls out in code; sound is no barrier. The animate bolts beyond language's shoreline while your choicest words scratch atop one another, an idiot palimpsest ghosting what has passed. Falconetti is present. Though caged in Dreyer's 'realized mysticism' then buried in a mental institution only to be found decades later on film musty and faded, her uncharted being is no less imminent. The written word, the entombed image, only the recognition of a face do we embed. Embedded, embodied. Words take the scenic route; her face is the face of our mother dappling our vision before we could even articulate a thought. The inlaid Falconetti precedes even the documents of the trial. If recognition were not enough the choir has us surrounded; it is not a fair fight. Burn this poem and all poems alongside her. She is the language language scratches out.
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