Saturday, December 31, 2011

Old Photo, Old Quote

"Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state.  Being in love shows a person who he should be." 
Anton Chekhov, Notebooks (S 17:14)

A Self Portrait, in a Landscape

Do the mountains and streams know
how they became a painting?
The rocks fall and the waters flow,

you can see autumn trees fainting,
under the sky's strokes of peaceful blue:
but how did it all become a painting?

If the vast sky and forest only knew
that they were held in brush and hand
before they found a way to break through

and on this welcome canvas stand.
Recreated and echoed in this art,
they arrived in a foreign land.

Held in the eye and then the heart,
they were lifted from their native Earth
to be spilt in paint, worlds apart,

as the artist to mountains gives birth.
And in the workshop rumors I hear
that the artist has brought to light their worth.

For in the painting he draws near
as beauty speaks his name
and the landscape becomes a mirror

until artist and artwork are the same.
For he has come to himself,
and cannot go back the way he came.