My aunt sent me this poem for my B-day... We Have our Arts so we won’t Die of Truth By Ray Bradbury, From Zen in the Art of Writing, 1980 WE HAVE OUR ARTS SO WE WON’T DIE OF TRUTH Know only Real? Fall dead. So Nietzsche said. We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth. The World is too much with us The Flood stays on beyond the Forty Days. The sheep that graze in yonder fields are wolves. The clock that ticks inside your head is truly Time And in the night will bury you. The children warm in bed at dawn will leave And take your heart and go to worlds you do not know. All this being so We need our Arts to teach us how to breather And beat our blood: accept the Devil’s neighborhood, And age and dark and cars that run us down, And clown with Death’s-head in him Or skull that wears Fool’s crown And jingles blood-rust bells and rattles groans To earthquake-settle attic bones late nights. All this, this, this, all this—too much! It cracks the heart! And so? Find Art. Seize brush. Take stance. Do fancy footwork. Dance. Run race. Try poem. Write play. Milton does more than drunk God can To justify Man’s way toward Man. And maundered Melville takes as task To find the mask beneath the mask. And homily by Emily D. shows dust-bin Man’s anomaly. And Shakespeare poisons up Death’s dart And of gravedigging hones an art. And Poe divining tides of blood Builds Ark of bone to sail the flood. Death, then, is painful wisdom tooth; With Art as forceps, pull that Truth, And plumb the abyss where it was Hid deep in dark and Time and Cause. Though Mona arch Worm devours our heart, With Yorick’s mouth cry, “Thanks!” to Art.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 19:55:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015