A Poem Wants You to Be Whole
by Ben Gucciardi
Tormented, the mind has no charity
for complexity or excess.
Art must reveal its purpose
swiftly and with clarity.
A poem wants you to be whole
and willing to enter its small lavish palace.
These are my silk curtains,
it wants to tell you, this scroll
belonged to a twelfth century king.
In black ink, a figure
in a rice field, a river
twisting south toward Beijing.
As you explore the scroll’s detail
the poem will end abruptly, having been
depended on by no one, and proving only
what a cloud proves when it veils
the midday sun and the olive trees
lose their shadows, and the words
slip through your mind wind
through silver leaves.
There’s a spiritual aspect to this poem that makes me think art is like a temple or a place of worship—somewhere divine where viewers go when in torment