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First Cow, Bacurau, and Nomadland reveal the stark racism of classic American Westerns.

One morning this autumn my brother woke to ash falling from the sky outside his window in Montana. He leapt out of bed, worried that his apartment building was on fire. It wasn’t. But the eerie haze and the woodsy scent that clung to it made the forest fires raging miles away feel disconcertingly close. Thousands of people were not so fortunate, as flames roared through vast regions of the American West, sometimes devouring entire towns.

The gray generals topple
while the confederate dead clap their bones.

Send them to the red clay smithies,
beat them into pruning hooks
or cart them to a monument mortuary,

but spare the blameless horses.

Traveller, Little Sorrel, Highfly, Blackjack—
cut the masters off their backs.
Lead them to a parkland
and give them freedom names.

Let the southern children climb atop them
and the northern children play
between their mighty hooves.

The Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

The evening after protests in Turin, Italy, Tempio Industriale—artist Valerio Perino—gathers tear gas canisters from the city streets. He creates artwork from urban refuse, from items that symbolize the environments that contain, discard, or deploy them. He reflects to viewers a materialism of the Western world: the detritus of buildings, the symbols of policing. From metal scraps found on city streets and in abandoned factories Tempio Industriale brings together fraught symbols to draw attention to humanity.

. . . my soul cries for You, O God (Ps. 42:2)

yearning
for streams of water
in the desert
of the Word
I stalk
the voice
where once
all was
but the Word
till it became flesh
and nary a Name
to be found