A few nights ago I was sitting in my living room and became aware that I rarely looked at the art on the walls. We have a series of three abstract canvasses that my wife and I bought at a home furnishings store some years ago. They are mass produced — I do not know who the artist is — but I decided to spend a little time staring at them.
As I looked at one of them, I began to feel my imagination move so I quickly grabbed a notebook and decided to write a short poem about each. The poems are loosely referential to the shapes and colors on the canvas. And although they take a narrative form, I also tried to keep true to the open-ended nature of the paintings. When I finished I brought all three together into the story of an enigmatic journey that I present below.
As many of us contemplate much more virus-induced time at home than usual over the next few weeks, I will recommend that trying your hand at writing in response to an overlooked piece of art in the home might be an interesting diversion and a fun exercise in helping you really see the space around you. But without further ado, here is my poem and the paintings that inspired it!
—
Triptych
I.
A mighty ship we made, prow of solid bronze,
And though we finished on a starless night,
We lit a torch and shouted “We achieve!”
As we floated her metal upon the water.
—
But the Lord of Docks turned his back;
For flaws he espied from his quiet pier.
A crack severe and grave, full height,
Marred her hull in flickering light.
—
He could look no more into our eyes,
For he knew that, still, we’d rig the sails.
—
II.
We landed short on unplanned shores,
And followed a road past fields of grain
Until a strange town we stumbled upon.
Its great hall greeting us, the shipwrecked.
—
Its steps formed a flowing curve. Painted without
And alive within, a beer hall stood across the way.
But next the cemetery came into view,
A plot overgrown, accepting death no longer.
—
To the left we looked, always to the left,
For to the right, we’d seen the ditch of shadows.
—
III.
Ground packed hard from hooves and feet,
We reached the end of that trodden road,
A trench barred the path, filled with fire.
—
It shimmered the air with furnace heat.
We saw another trench not far beyond,
A chasm of ice, all shards of blue-white.
And our telescope revealed yet a third,
This one full of nothing, full of night.
—
Two walls we also saw, still to the left.
Metal and stone: each higher than the last
And hiding, for certain, a curtain of gold.