(Imagine the title centered)   Art in Pursuit of Man

        Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Art cannot be but in pursuit of man
Whether or not man is in pursuit of art
For men are shifting shoals of shiftlessness
Artistic absolutes that calendar-clique

But art is not defined, not locked in time
Art does not yield her crown in obedience
To yet another Decree 349
To yet another Order of the Day

Art is herself; her names are Sapientia
And Sophia; she creates; she does not obey

“…and looking at a picture on the opposite wall.”

                          -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Ikons are windows to another World
Of Theos and Theotokos, of our saints
Some as merry as yet are others stern
While forming from the prayerful writer’s 1 hand

And in the saints the Light of God shines through
True witnesses to that transcendental Truth
And so we pause and with a candle catch
The prayer-light of their eternity

(As does the bedes-spider 2 who lives there)
Ikons are windows to that truer World


1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written rather than drawn or painted, but y’r ‘umble scrivener is no authority; the reader might begin a study of ikons / icons with:

http://www.pravmir.com/how-to-sep-up-an-icon-corner-at-home/

2 An Orthodox friend discovered that a spider had made its home among his ikons, and so in peace and hierarchical obedience the little creature served God as a sort of canon, or perhaps a bedes-spider, until its death.

This house is silent now, this new smart house
The storm has downed the power lines; wild rains
Against the windows beat like hungry wolves
And all house gadgetry is silent and still

And just as still: the Barnes & Noble Nook™®
The Ipod™® unsupported, the dead FitBit™®
That failed before its third Christmas day
The La Crosse(tm)® that failed before its second

And dead are all the promises that they gave:
Our silent gadgets in this cold, dark cave

Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords must wait
For seasons upon seasons to pass in flight
Seasons, and Feasts upon a Table set
Untasted by sleepers, and winged away

But, exiles, you may taste of mercy here
And you may taste forever of that Feast
If you are not afraid to hear the silence
Where out of time all healing will be given

If you can trust that which you cannot know -
Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords will wait


1 C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The human and the tree frog say good night
The human inside and the tree frog out
Sharing a pane of glass but little else
For frogs maintain their standards, don’cha know

And sticky pads and frontal lobes don’t mix
Not in polite reptilian society
Since humans, you know, they’re not really green
Nice enough in their place, of course, but still…

Good frogs dismiss the human as a lazy **** -
For sleeping while all honest creatures work

(ripped from the sages' pages of the Middle Ages – “Sumer is icumen in”)

Merrily he eats the worms
Pull them from the ground!
Their heads pop up
On them he sups
As they squirm around
Chirp, robin!

The squirrels are eating all the seeds
The cardinal’s head’s a-bobbin’
The doves are cooing
The cows are mooing
Chirp merrily, robin!

Robin, robin
How well you chirp
Now eat the worms and burp!

Burp, burp, burp!

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
                  and the *** the master’s crib….’”

                   -Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set