L’Opposition et les Cases Conjugées sont Réconciliées

I say I won’t go

and you say you won’t choose

We make games of blocking and correspondence

but cannot sustain the play

I evade, so you triangulate reciprocity

we here both meet and face the inversion

You say to win is not always the end

but I say that if you push

she’ll take you from the kingside

and bleed you cross the board

In response to Marcel Duchamp's ‘L'Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled) 1932.

See the artwork that inspired this poem in the flesh, along with more than 100 of Marcel Duchamp’s world-renowned pieces, in ‘The Essential Duchamp’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 27 April – 11 August 2019.