Analysis

Pictures of something achieved
lose their reality
when you touch the flat surface
and realise it is only
an imitation of three dimensions.

I would try to chisel a sculpture

but I've never had the time required

to select the type of rock.

So it's paper cuts

instead of crushed bones,

and crocodile tears

instead of wailing.

It's waking up

instead of being born.

 

I couldn't grasp the intention

of the new medium.

I got lost analysing the brush strokes,

and a world of feeling

breathed and pulsated

around my lifeless sums.

Written in the summer of 2015. 

This poem is about beauty's fragility to dissection, an observer's susceptibility to pride, and the imagination's vulnerability to desensitisation. Sometimes we must consciously humble ourselves before beauty, whether it be man-made art, that of nature, or the beauty within the divine, so that we do not remain unaffected. Emotional responses are a gift, and should form part of our understanding of these things. It's not always the case but... If we get caught up in details, remain academically aloof, or merely calloused to certain issues, we can miss out on the beauty of the big picture, the splendour within simplicity, or the boundless depths of emotion and imagination.