What’s down in the basement

 

The Door

by Franz Wright

 

Going to enter the aged horizontal cellar door

 

(the threshing leaves, the greenish light

of the approaching storm)

 

you suddenly notice you’re opening the cover of an

enormous book.

 

One that’s twice as big as you are—

 

but you know all about that:

 

the groping descent alone in total darkness,

 

toward—what?

 

You know what you’re looking for, and you forget, and

maybe you have no idea

 

yet. But you know something is down there, and a

light you need to find

 

before you can even begin to search . . .

 

I had lunch with my daughter in Detroit the other day, and she took me on a tour of the building where she’s interning, the historic Chrysler House. The highlight of the tour was the basement offices of dPop, a commercial interior design firm whose work is—

 

I have a few photos to share of their passionate, thoughtful, provocative workspace (truly, it is), but first a thought on why I put Franz Wright’s poem on the door to an underground vault. Inside the vault is dPop’s conference room, presumably where lots of creative work takes place. And Wright’s poem captures the creative process so well:

 

You know what you’re looking for, and you forget, and

maybe you have no idea

 

yet. But you know something is down there

 

Here’s the interior of the vault. Only a few of the safe deposit boxes have been opened.

 

Notice the hat and glasses of the Invisible Man in the corner.

 

Another conference room, this one bright as a movie space station.

 

A workhorse, I guess–

 

Those are soldiers, ghostly on the wall.

 

For another poem of Wright’s and a short biography, link here.