Art Poem by Charles Tiffin Clegg

Art

Art is great, aesthetic
It's beauty in our minds
It is common to us all
Uplifting feeling pleasant awe
We step back almost stunned
And from within a joy arises
We are now enlightened ones
Perfection within our senses
We dance the waltz of love

Art conveys the best there is
Communication at its finest
We understand the artists thought
The perfect theme presented
Satisfied yet somehow wishing more
Satisfaction keeps us peaceful
Never to be the same again
Some walk up in the clouds
Still others grateful kneel to pray

There are those idealists
Judging what is right
They pick out art with sunlight
avoiding all darkness in the human night
The world they say must see the best
The moral and the true
All the rest is darkness
Truth is morality and right
Other portrayals are sewage flushing to the soul

Yet Aristotle in his day
Saw art as epic tradgedy
Shakespeare told of Juliet
and dying deep in love
and romeo killed Paris
before he took the poison
Death with feuds and hatefulness
How pleasant is all that?
Montagues shook hands and Capulets smiled back

For those who only want what's good
Defined of course by them
Art has boundaries high and strong
The whole world is mostly awful
Their eyes can see no distance
They want a tiny slice of life.
These do-right goody goodies
Shut out the true as falseness
Limitations live horrified inside their fearful hearts

Dedicated to Gena