Seldom the notes swing as they do

when winds to and fro, in the afternoon blue,

carry such sounds, as for the heart burn,

when, inspired or not, the artist concerns

 

himself, as he turns

against all death scorns,

to life, with a pen, and

the occult forlorn,

 

for to reveal is the Song

of passion prolonged,

and what’s hidden is the realm

of the beautiful, wronged.

 

Have any here tasted the desperate heat

of cordial pain, beyond vascular meat?

For invisible, it is, that causes such hurt

As to artists conforms each day’s concert:

 

that terrible sound, a cacophony, proud,

that goes all around, and crashes aloud,

but these are the things the artist converts

into Songs, and Paints, and the purest comforts!

 

Watch and behold what awesome power

occurs in the solemn, passionate hour,

when to a clock strikes such riveting lightning,

that chars the hands, to commence such frightening

 

as arrives on the ground of the inner long death,

that civilization breeds, in the order of Seth!

Yet Horus, alive, with whom artists contrive,

holds high the sun, for Prometheans to thrive

 

between the blows, and the slaps,

and the dreams, and the lapse

that divides the time from luminescent Now:

that Present such rhyme as defies the How!

 

For, questions like these, that remain interminable,

are solved much better by Brush and Thurible,

for the incense, alike, in Altar and Art

pays homage to God, and man’s own part

​

in defying the shadows, in crushing the dark,

where stifled or drowned are the songs of the Lark,

so the role, it is, for the artist and bard,

to seize Brush and Harp, and lighten what’s hard.

 

And, even when hope seems perished in rote,

remember, friend, that freer than your coat

is Art when the heart lights a fire so bold

as to burn depression, and sear everything cold!

 

Indeed, not all moments seem so clean,

for often we sulk in sadness and drear,

but these are only Preludes and Fugues

that later come alive, in Letters or Hues!

 

Like this, it won’t seem, until the day

you awaken and see the purpose of the fray,

when Storms in the mind, and a heart condemned,

suddenly create, and command, and suspend

 

those blocks, and the cries, and that treacherous pride,

and everything sick, where the Phantoms lied:

those demons of will that stole your light,

and held you fast, in that prison of fright!

 

Virgil, I am, to your Dante’s Eye,

that for this Inferno, I wish Paradise

upon you, your house, and all your sorrow

that victory, attained, may be yours to borrow,

 

for nothing is ours, neither life, nor compassion,

but this you may keep:

 

the Fire, and the Passion.

 

_________________

 

R.V. Smith: “The Passion”, 12-26-25

 

© 2025 by Ryan Vincent Smith