Uniform and Grey?
i.
I do not think it fair to say
My art is uniform and grey.
(Who would agree to have defined,
By adjectives quite so unkind,
The outcome of a life’s vocation
Expressing the imagination?).
ii.
My poems’ themes range over all –
Or much! – of human thought; their call
Is to the interests aroused,
(And the emotions there espoused),
By knowledge, science, history,
Culture, (arts and society),
Religions, myths, philosophies,
Astronomy, cosmogonies,
Flora and fauna, natural
Phenomena, the noumenal;
And humankind’s responses to
These things, and others, passing through
Its sentient experience
Of problematic existence:
The facts and fictions that comprise
The skein of truths, mistakes and lies
Of all supposed realities
And their profound complexities.
iii.
Added to these are my concerns
How best to represent, (in terms
Of content, context and intent),
What seems to be significant
In meaning, form æsthetic worth –
Intrinsic and extrinsic both –
To satisfy the innate needs
On which the spirit chiefly feeds —
To know, to understand, to feel
Its place, as individual,
In the impersonality
Of huge universality —
And human intellect requires
To justify its fierce desires
Not just to be, but to be sure
It is creation’s cynosure.
iv.
These are the subjects, themes and aims
To which my art has laid its claims.
Each has its self-suggested forms
That, guided by holistic norms
And principled conventions, shape
Both facts and fantasies to take
Evocative expression, find
Acceptance in some other mind
Through rhythmic, metrical designs
And transformational combines
Of rhymes and ambiguities,
Of metaphors and similes,
Which lead its individual
Concerns and interests to trawl
The universal relevance
Of personal experience,
And so transcend the transience
Of temporal coincidence
Whose false significances hide,
(Beneath each moment’s flooding tide
Of thick-clouding opacities),
The truths of their realities
So we can’t see quite what they mean
Until time wipes perspectives clean
And clears our vision to reveal
Details those moments may conceal;
To catch the spiritual light
That is the source of all insight
Which is creative and which makes
Those objects that, (for their own sakes
And ours), express our deepest thoughts
And moods in such unique reports
That qualities inherently
Evoked through them will clearly be
Accepted as exemplary
Of what true works of art should be.
v.
Art objects own simplicity
Allied to deep profundity;
Both pith and pleonasm share;
Plainness and decoration pair;
Both rough and smooth combine in just
The right proportions as they must;
Match hard and soft, in mood and tone,
Textured to themes which they propone;
Facts and imaginations mixed
So that reality is fixed
By content and by context both
Unhidden by the undergrowth
Of too much sensuality
Or intellectuality;
Each quality and attribute
Proportioned carefully, to suit
The artists’ pre-conceived intents
To symbolise what represents
The essence of those thoughts which brought
Existence to them out of nought.
vi.
If principled conventions spoil
The bright designs of honest toil,
Or smirch the colours each supplies
To perceptivity’s sharp eyes;
If such a range of interests
And qualitative worths addressed
Lead people to assess my work
As being plain, or dulled with murk,
And that such art seems uniform and grey:
There is no more I can, (politely!), say.
