The Artist’s Trance

Today you left a sketch all sketchy
on your desk; came back to find
a wretched yellow pest had fetched
the creature from your scene –
and now was busily demeaning
all you’d done – devising and incising

runs of radiating lines down through
the hollow fellow’s skull and spine,
revising him into a huge blue monument
of ice.“That wasn’t very nice,” you said,
but they were dead to you: they’d long
surrendered to the artist’s trance,

and were advancing quite without
another thought. What have I wrought?
Can art do art? Where does it start?
you wondered, though you didn’t
wonder long. As long as something’s
making something, nothing’s wrong.




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