The Lost One
“Master Alfred de Musset says great artists … belong to space, to the universe, to anything infinite.” ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan
I could not give an outline of him, for how
Could I begin, or end? A paradox
Is all that could result. He’s just like now,
The moment that is notional. It locks
Us into one ephemeral, sly cast
That’s gone as soon as synapse hovers on
It. Try to lash him to a struggling mast
With lyricism calling, the foregone
Conclusion will be missed before the mind
Or heart can beat it out in filigree
Or golden mold. We might as well be blind
And using noses in attempts to see
Him. He is much too beautiful and flexed
For flimsy silhouette, for us, perplexed.
An outline always touches things outside
Itself and so is more inclusive, though
It does not mean to be. Its lines collide
Not only with what edges touch, just so,
Inside a painting’s bounds, for instance, but
The vast surroundings everywhere about
It (fitting since the dreaming canvas cut
To fill the edges always meant to shout
Out bigger concepts). Feelings and large thought
Included in the oils were far too strong
To be contained inside that trap. They wrought
Their way inside the artist for too long
To be restricted by a rigid frame.
Philosophy and God will not be tame.
Precision
The vast environment everywhere near
Is banished just beyond our sight, always
Just past the field of vision in the clear
Cut notions of the artist, and tall ways
Of poets’ exiles of the fullest truth.
They cut out all the cosmos that is not
As utter as perfection in a youth.
The universe is rubbed out like a dot
By art, and music, and the poets’ lines.
Such focus is exact and all the rest
Is nothingness. Their artistry refines
The ordinary. What is left is best.
They zoom in on one face, a shoulder, arm,
Or blue, blue eye. Anything else will harm.