Art is a manifestation of grief, It is a rising sun, A clear sky after days of downpour It is a brooding mother, Photographs of times gone by, It is a country awakening, It is another name for a revolution, It is the moss in a graveyard Or flowers next to a tombstone, Art is a bird discovering the wind And a boy jumping puddles in the rain; It is immortalized in your smile, In your eyes, In the softness of your breath Against the nape of my neck, Art is a manifestation of hope, It is all of humanity breathing and grieving in paper, In acrylic and into paintbrushes, into symphonies, into the nib dipped in ink; Art is- Van Gogh in a field of sunflowers, It is Plath finding herself in the early hours of the day, It is Bukowski’s secret pact with the bluebird, It is him 20 years after Jane’s death Saying “the tigers have found me and I do not care” It is Dickinson clad in white, up in her bedroom saying, “I am one of the lingering bad ones”, It is Sackville saying that she’s reduced to a thing that only wants Virginia, It is the lost hope in Virginia’s letter, “If anybody could have saved me it would have been you”, It is Keats in his last letter afraid to say goodbye to Brawne; Art is joy and grief, It is all that I love, all that I fear, All that I wish I could’ve had, It flourishes between one breath and the next. It houses no fear, It asks for nothing more than time, It refuses to beg, it refuses defeat, Art has no address- Art is the only thing that death cannot touch.
Annwesha Das
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