this poem is based on an essay by the modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth*

The present moment is the only real time.
Tradition no longer a day-dream
and things that have been made
seem like the unfolding of one idea,
the growth of some great tree.

Relationship and mystery make loveliness,
such loveliness to project into sculpture -
not words not paint nor sound:
because it cannot be a complete thought
unless it could have been done in no other way.
It must be stone shape and no other shape.

I do not want to make a stone horse
that is trying to and cannot smell the air:
the sensitive nose, the moving ears, the deep eyes;
these are not stone forms.
I want to make a living thing in stone,
to express my awareness
and thought of these things.

To carve is not enough
there must be a living and moving
towards an ideal.

In the contemplation of nature
we are perpetually renewed,
mystery and imagination kept alive,
rightly understood,
gives us power to project
our abstract vision of beauty.