The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say, ‘There is the surface. Now think—or rather feel, intuit what is beyond it, what reality must be like if it looks this way.’

—Susan Sontag

I was once famous for a hat. Oh, I loved that hat. It had a string under the chin.

But I had to give up wearing it because people recognized the hat and knew it was me beneath.

    —Greta Garbo

That face, flour-white, like Chaplin’s

tilts the bedroom— her Spanish lover

watching, too, as Queen Christina…

Gasping Garbo from balcony seat 4A,

Hans Hass, inventor of underwater photography,

Stalking Under Water, attended a screening

he was known to retell in too much detail:

…memorizes each porcelain bowl, each grape

transported from afar to ‘the best room in the inn,’

looking, can you believe, more intently

at objects than at her lover, light and color,

sheathed, like the good Queen's sword!

The dark (like underwater) let him be intrusive—

not enough, however, to call out Greta,

only Garbo, or La Divina!

That was what he was sought

among Garbo’s close-ups since 1933:

the divine, the face with a mark of God.

In her first talkie MGM announced, Garbo Talks,

then Garbo Laughs (open-mouthed) and

finally, Garbo Swims—all through the dark

Hans was there. Each fresh encounter

revived the first: Queen Christina

at a ship’s prow, soft-focused and posing

for a still portrait, not a moving picture.

The sails, the sailors, and Hans in the frame:

She commands the water with her face—

friable and smooth, so too the minnows

throw themselves in the Swedish snow,

subjects to glimpse their departing Queen.

In each tale his mind was overworked,

atoms accelerated in a frenzy,

golden bees in swarms, busy bees

he read Napoleon ordered woven into

the cushion of a folding camp-chair: stories

more construction than discovery.

Hans invented underwater cinematography

in case her ship might approach his pier—

he’d testify (goggles up) with raw proof

to the fishermen who’d lied to him for years,

balancing himself seal-wet in 1941:

We all had surely seen her there, above the mist!

After those many close-ups, Garbo left

her luminous visage upon him —

dumbstruck he let himself recall

her face, now larger than a block of ice

cooling patrons, with blowing fans,

at Main Street Theater, rows A - G.

If Hans had known then that staring

was not seeing, he’d have understood

the wisdom of Queen Christina’s instruction:

Fasten your memory to tables and chairs,

capable of withstanding embrace.

They will not perish, like a lover’s face.

In 1956, still asking mighty questions

in darkness, never the mild skeptic,

he hears Bergman’s bright knight Antonius

speak words Garbo could only gaze:

I shall remember this moment. The stillness,

the dusk, the bowl of strawberries,

the bowl of milk … I shall carry this

in my memory between my hands as carefully

as if it were a bowl, filled to the brim

with fresh milk … and this shall be

for me a sign of great sufficiency.

With that, she lands beside him:

in seat 4A, Garbo’s wide-brimmed hat

nears Hans’ goggles – her body,

like his, accelerates, lit amid Antonius;

He ravishes the hat before he sees her, beneath.

Hans knows its surface of raw hazelnut,

creamy leather rubbed unevenly smooth.

He knows that while she’s made him mute,

she coaxes objects to move. The camera,

his first love, and Garbo’s hat, his second,

entrust him with a knowledge, not of what’s

below, but what’s across, along the taut

hide. Hans leads his tribe of image-junkies

to redraw their cosmos along a surface

metered out in Pythagorean vanity,

the ratio of any Greek goddess.

Drunk light slices shadows on their faces:

she disclosed herself long ago: Garbo Smiles

– making any screen’s eye sufficient.