The Oldest Work of Art

 

Five Dancers, by Auguste Rodin

God is the oldest work of art. He is very poorly preserved, and many parts of Him are later additions. But that is the way things get built: by our being able to talk about Him, by our having seen everything else.

Early Journals

The Apple Orchard (I)

The Forest, by Paul Cézanne

Come now as the sun goes down.
See how evening greens the grass.
Is it not as though we had already gathered it
and saved it up inside us,

so that now, from feelings and memories,
from new hope and old pleasures,
all mixed with inner darkness,
we fling it before us under the trees.

New Poems

Lullaby

Sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz. Photo: Jon Bronberg

When it happens that I lose you,
will you find that you can sleep
without my whispering over you
like the rustling linden tree?

Without my lying awake beside you
and letting my words
fall upon your breast, your limbs,
your mouth, like petals of a rose?

Without my letting you be cradled
alone with what is yours,
like a garden abundant
with lavender and lemon balm.

New Poems

Full view of Kollwitz's Mother with her Dead Son. Photo: Andre K.
at the Neue Wache “Memorial for Victims of War and Tyranny” in Berlin
 



Photo: Wolfgang Brüßler

Click on the images to enlarge. To see a remarkable gallery of images of this immensely powerful memorial, click here for the first image and then cycle through the entire "fotocommunity.com" collection of photos by clicking on "Next" or on the photos themselves (there are 98 photos). For more on the Neue Wache Memorial go here.

Wild Rosebush

Roses and Beetle

by Vincent van Gogh

How it stands there against the dark
of this late rainy hour, young and clean,
swaying its generous branches
yet absorbed in its essence as rose;
with wide-open flowers already appearing,
each unsought and each uncared-for.
So, endlessly exceeding itself
and ineffably from itself come forth,
it calls the wanderer, who in evening contemplation
passes on the road:
Oh see me standing here, see how unafraid I am
and unprotected. I have all I need.

Uncollected Poems

White Roses

Still Life: Vase with Roses

by Vincent van Gogh

Every day, on contemplating  these exquisite white roses, I wonder if they are not the perfect image of the unity of being and non-being in our lives. That, I would say, constitutes the fundamental equation of our existence.

Letter to Madame M-R

January 4, 1923

Often When I Imagine You

Path in the Woods, by Vincent van Gogh

Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest.

From The Book of Hours I, 45

Springtime People

Amoureux de Vence, by Marc Chagall

We are no longer innocent; but we must make every effort to become primitive so that we can begin again each time, and from our hearts. We must become springtime people in order to find the summer, whose greatness we must herald.

Early Journals