Art as the Gaining and Practise of Wisdom

I

What are you doing this morning? – and will you play again

your lustrous fiddle for the coins strangers drop into your hat?

Or have you moved on from hustling Trafalgar Square

where the floating Yodas connect like Einstein's cat?

Either way, your art creates its beauty by merely becoming

the eloquent centre of its universe, its mimetic timbres thrumbing.

 

Steady - I'm not here just to praise; what if music left no artifacts:

ever thought of that? Nothing left as your brain and fingers relax

while the pub crowd turns its back on the performance corner;

maybe you'll never get that demo tape past security – eh? Face facts.

At least you're learning some of the time: would a different artistry suffice

that left a trace of your passing by? Better than this fool's paradise.

 

II

Take drawing pencil and sketch pad, study my face closely. Now draw it.

Not so hard, you say? Keep up, Tiger, stay focused like the stooping peregrine.

You'll be surprised at what emerges; you'll have re-created me, for ever!

Started with the eyes, did you, the soul's gatehouses? did mine let you in?

That flash of humanity twinkling around my penciled eyes; are you surprised?

Surely something worth waking to: art for your sanity, art without compromise.

 

Lose years in acts of pure creation; your works speak in unending foreign tongues,

indecipherable by all until you voice them: textiles, ceramics, poésie, image and the rest.

You are the sovereign of each – share them wisely. Don't forget to lay down your pride;

be generous, ambitious, free and loyal, lay out your spirit: make the good be the best.

Still there, I see: just beyond the steps of the Gallery, goofing off in violinic reverie,

lost in thoughts of what might be, if one could only find the time; sighing heavily.

 

Chris Hubbard

2018