VICTOR RAFOLSKI ON ART
You dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue, Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh, Topped by Gorilla heads. You Marmoset, Trained scoundrel, taught to question and ensnare, I hate you, hate your laws and hate your courts. Hands off, give me a chair, now let me be. I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me. I love this woman, but what is love to you? What is it to your laws or courts? I love her. She loves me, if you'd know. I entered her room— She stood before me naked, shrank a little, Cried out a little, calmed her sudden cry When she saw amiable passion in my eyes— She loves me, if you'd know. I saw in her eyes More in those moments than whole hours of talk From witness stands exculpate could make clear My innocence. But if I did a crime My excuse is hunger, hunger for more life. Oh what a world, where beauty, rapture, love Are walled in and locked up like coal or food And only may be had by purchasers From whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold. Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste, While power and freedom skulk with famished lips Too tightly pressed for curses. So do men, Save for the thousandth man, deny themselves And live in meagreness to make sure a life Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale; And live in ways, companionships as fixed As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock. You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires, Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war? Then let men live. The moral equivalent Of war is freedom. Art does not suffice— Religion is not life, but life is living. And painted cherries to the hungry thrush Is art to life. The artist lived his work. You cannot live his life who love his work. You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherries Who hope to live through art. Beer-soaked Goliaths, The story's coming of her nakedness Be patient for a time. All this I learned While painting pictures no one ever bought, Till hunger drove me to this servile work As butler in her father's house, with time On certain days to walk the galleries And look at pictures, marbles. For I saw I was not living while I painted pictures. I was not living working for a crust, I was not living walking galleries: All this was but vicarious life which felt Through gazing at the thing the artist made, In memory of the life he lived himself: As we preserve the
Prev.
Back
Top