Art Survives
Trust that art survives: Emily's
seventeen hundred eighty-nine
idiosyncratic hymn-breathed
journal entries, Caravaggio's
lurid canvases, Chichen-Itza
strung with blood-fed vines.
Forget the salt erasure of Carthage,
all the Meso-American artifacts
smelted to float the Armada
and feed the Inquisition. Forget
the hydrocarbons gnawing what remains
of the Acropolis and the tidal tongues
that flick Piazza di San Marco.
Forget, too, recurrent dreams of methane
wafting up through bulldozed soil
from manuscripts typed but never sent.
seventeen hundred eighty-nine
idiosyncratic hymn-breathed
journal entries, Caravaggio's
lurid canvases, Chichen-Itza
strung with blood-fed vines.
Forget the salt erasure of Carthage,
all the Meso-American artifacts
smelted to float the Armada
and feed the Inquisition. Forget
the hydrocarbons gnawing what remains
of the Acropolis and the tidal tongues
that flick Piazza di San Marco.
Forget, too, recurrent dreams of methane
wafting up through bulldozed soil
from manuscripts typed but never sent.
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Author's Note
Appeared in Gumball Poetry gumballs in gumball poetry vending machines back 2000. It paid a contributor's copy of his/her gumball.
Other stories by Gary Hardaway
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This is so evocotive...blood-fed veins, artifacts smelted to float the Armada and feed the Inquisition.
You read this; you feel smart.
It's hard to trust when there is so much that must be forgotten in order to do so.*
The great force of imagery realized in language. Well done. *
Thank you, Steve. History always seems unfortunate. We keep learning new variations on the old themes.
Thank you, Gary. Ruins and the luck of the draw can be so intriguing.
Thank you, Sam. Poems like photos can be subversively selective.
And in the end, everything dies.
Thank you, Frankie.