poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Palestine

Consider the Shadow-Rain of Guernica

In hanging gardens & multi-dimensional language,

in empathetic irrigation of the human-heart,

in roots shaped like geometrical echoes,

consider intention.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind

& reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider intentions.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Along the ruined street

a young Palestinian father in a backwards baseball cap

carries his child wrapped head to toe in white cloth

up to his waist in waters gushing from concrete pipes

smashed to rubble.

Two actors view Picasso’s Guernica convincingly & with one fork

share a sponge-like delicacy dribbled with chocolate on a gold-trimmed plate,

the edge of the tablecloth wet with dank water swirling, as they whisper

convincingly in dulcet tones & put a coin in the jukebox, suddenly aware

of the shadow-rain mirroring two worlds and one reality.

Yesterday, for the first time this summer, I saw

a grasshopper – perched on a drainpipe at a slight diagonal,

hyper-vigilant, his shadow deep green ash.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind &

reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Digital manipulations of linocut prints by S. McCabe

war

I wanted to say something and ‘borrowed’ more powerful work than my own to do so.

I wanted to say something about what is happening to the bodies & minds of children, to brothers & sisters, to young people, to mothers & fathers, to grandmothers & grandfathers in Gaza, Palestine. To their pets, homes, and possessions: their photographs, clothing, toys. To their health and their future.

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

“I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think they need machinery like that.” 

— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children’s Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death (1969)

The Mothers, 1921-2, Kathe Kollwitz 1867-1945. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P82464

Follow the Tate link to find out more about the Kathe Kollwitz series of woodcuts titled War.

Like many, I am familiar with Kathe Kollwitz’s great skill and mastery in emotional imagery addressing war. She lost one of her two sons to WW1. She lost her grandson to WW2.

Like many, I have read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a great writer and literary artist who as a prisoner of war (in WW2) experienced the firebombing of Dresden, Germany.

I do not claim copyright to the work of Kathe Kollwitz and use it for non-commercial purposes of education & commentary.