One of several Strandbeest scuptures at the Peabody Essex Museum. (Courtesy photo)
In October Bromfield freshmen and their teachers visited the Peabody Essex Museum for a viewing of Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest, large mechanisms made of PVC that are able to move on their own. The trip inspired these poems.
Turning, switching, and tensing.
Scuttling across wet sand.
Feeling the soft grains,
Sucking in the dangerous water.
Wind rushing through its wings
but never leaving the ground.
A binary life with no electricity.
Breathing and thinking and running.
The children of a pilot, painter, and physician
Tan animals, boney and free.
—Kiara Muñz
The sand, the tubes, the wind,
key elements to make it come alive.
Like a living thing, let out of its cage,
but no one can stop it, like a bull on parade,
the mind of a wise man,
the body of a machine.
From the Netherlands to the red, white, and blue,
a brittle piece of art that can only be made by one man.
The end result is astonishing,
an erratic idea that had the biggest impact on so many.
—Alex Magan
He said he would make them – so he did,
making them crawl like large arachnids,
His brain-aching work was very forgiving,
a new addition to his family, plastic yet living,
the new kind of foot is a marvelous feature,
adding a certain beauty to the magnificent creature,
they do not need food, wind is their feast,
and gives smooth waddling to the magnificent beast,
it seems that at any given moment, a Iimb will break,
due to the rattling sounds their brittle bones make.
—Calvin Meyer
A gargantuan, rickety leviathan
meanders along the beach.
Step after step after step,
the legs click, click, click,
and the creature continues to walk.
Great white wings, bulging in the wind,
propelling the slow, circular drive of the legs.
Beside the sloshing, perpetual movement of the waves,
on the hard, packed sand,
the machine becomes alive.
—Liam Makosky
The morning breeze permits the elegant march down the beach.
Waves crash on the soft sand and retract back into the vast ocean.
Skeptical, the skeleton trots back to safety.
Galloping in the warm, dry sand, with the plants of the dunes dancing in the wind.
The skeleton finds peace with its surroundings.
Waves, anxious to meet the skeleton, grow closer.
As the waves creep up, the startled structure advances down the beach.
The wind settles, so do the anxious waves.
The shining Sun regresses as the Moon becomes visible.
The skeleton grows weary, and rests for the next day.
—Patrick Flanagan Jones
They shuffle jerkily, but with grace.
Wings flapping and waving to the invisible audience
Powered by the loud breath of wind.
Gossiping amongst themselves,
But chittering and chattering in a language only they understand.
As the sun nears the end of its joumey,
They still tirelessly pace up and down the golden sand.
—Benjamin Buchovecky
