Pearls from artists* # 118

Monet’s garden

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

MONET’S “WATERLILIES” (for Bill and Sonja) 

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

          I come again to see

the serene great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

          The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

          that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

          each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

Robert Hayden (1913 – 1980) in Art and Artists:  Poems

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