Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LAYMAN IN AN ART GALLERY, by CLAIR E. GRAY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LAYMAN IN AN ART GALLERY, by                    
First Line: A landscape draws your eye
Last Line: Will be known the measure of our kind.
Subject(s): Art & Artists


I

A landscape draws your eye,
Its smug conceit
Of neutral tinted sky
Reflects the painted heat
To bulbous hills,
And patterned trees, too neat,
Surround old-fashioned frills
Of flower bed,
To shade the fragile sills
Of house of gingerbread.
Precision rows
Of corn in faded red,
Stand stiffly, while there flows
To distant spot,
A stream.
A rooster crows
His prowess.
Was he not
Named ruler by
The willing hens he sought?

II

Should blatant eulogy or bald derision
Attend these Titans of exotic vision?

III

Upon a canvas daubed with blue and green,
Each smear of color gives a blow, a shock,
Until one shudders at the lurid scene,
At awkward branch above unsightly rock,
At melting snow in spots of dirty white,
And at the greasy texture of the mud,
To turn aside and spare his eyes the sight
Of stringy clouds that through the horror scud.

But, pausing at the entrance of the room,
In spite of memory, one can but stare;
The awkward branch has balanced to a plume
Of grace amid the softened color flare.
Each tint, in harmony with others, seems
Of true intensity amid the glow
Until the soft ensemble fairly gleams
With simple beauty in its even flow.

IV

See the pictures yonder,
Futuristic style...

I can only ponder
With a puzzled smile
Scenes that seem distorted
As through faulty glass,
And cattle who are thwarted
By eccentric grass...

V

...From the works that we shall leave behind
Will be known the measure of our kind.





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