Arte Et Labore 2 Poem by DM W

'A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.' Albert Camus


Deep within the heart of my world,
Is a heavy grey burden
Which I have to shoulder and carry;
Like Sisyphus chained to futility.
I inhabit the shadow realms
Of bleak, routine existence.
I trip over every obstacle.
Yet I continue to caress
And shape the marble and stone
Of my incessant dreaming.

My eyes are averted from the sky
And all of the teeming spaces.
Unlike certain carefree painters
I'm not concerned; not at all
With pretty postcard pictures
Of sumptuous, Utopian living.
Rather I rummage in the darkness
To collect faithful symbols
Signs & images; hidden amidst
The vast debris of consciousness

Creation is painstaking adaption
To an indifferent climate;
It is not verdant mystery or magic.
Mozart's withered, editing hand
Belies the myth of sweet, unfettered genius.
It's not the soft embrace of lullabies;
Nor sunbursts of blissful devotion:
It's not a hymn to hackneyed idols.
It's a longing for insight in an age
Of rampant day glow surfaces.

My poems are forged in the silent,
Icy realms of ragged prayer & doubt,
Before I pour out my gnarled presence
Onto pristine white pages:
Between crude notion & wrought conception
Lies a lifetime's unacknowledged labour.
Like fabled Jacob rapt by lucid visions
I have to wrestle perennially
With Art's writhing, disturbing angel.
It's a slow awakening to the Light.