Arte Et Labore 2

'A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.' Albert Camus Deep within the heart of my world, Is a heavy grey burden Which I have to shoulder and carry; Like Sisyphus chained to futility. I inhabit the shadow realms Of bleak, routine existence. I trip over every obstacle. Yet I continue to caress And shape the marble and stone Of my incessant dreaming. My eyes are averted from the sky And all of the teeming spaces. Unlike certain carefree painters I'm not concerned; not at all With pretty postcard pictures Of sumptuous, Utopian living. Rather I rummage in the darkness To collect faithful symbols Signs & images; hidden amidst The vast debris of consciousness Creation is painstaking adaption To an indifferent climate; It is not verdant mystery or magic. Mozart's withered, editing hand Belies the myth of sweet, unfettered genius. It's not the soft embrace of lullabies; Nor sunbursts of blissful devotion: It's not a hymn to hackneyed idols. It's a longing for insight in an age Of rampant day glow surfaces. My poems are forged in the silent, Icy realms of ragged prayer & doubt, Before I pour out my gnarled presence Onto pristine white pages: Between crude notion & wrought conception Lies a lifetime's unacknowledged labour. Like fabled Jacob rapt by lucid visions I have to wrestle perennially With Art's writhing, disturbing angel. It's a slow awakening to the Light.