Poem: "Paintings in a Cave"
A poem about art and the artist's vision or "poesis"
This poem was first published in The Lost Country literary journal. It is my attempt to express my view of art and aesthetics.
Paintings in a Cave
By Tyler Morrison
From the petroglyphs to the cineplex In darkened halls, on cavern walls, Apollo’s rays Fall strange and beautiful. The world behind our sleeping eyes Is brought to life through waking eyes, The weighty world of dreams That dreams about our world And yet is not our world, but more. It’s captured in the camera Or carved out on the caveman’s rock, And made to move and speak and sing By some divine illumination, Free from logic’s elucidation, Yet seen and heard and felt and drunk Simply all the same. The images on the curtain screen, The figures on the solemn stone Remind a man he is himself, Not just himself but something else. There’s more to man than blood and bone. And so we sit and watch agape At shadows dancing, mythical. The shadows sprung not from the sun, Nor still an artificial one, But the psychic light of Poesy, Reflecting always Beauty, Beauty the goddess the Muses worship, And trembling mortals would dare behold.
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