Category: art

AG2024_1134128a or we smile and mouth with myriad subtleties

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AG2024_1134128a

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
     We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
     We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

presented by the Estate of Lynne Gelfman, December 2 – 22, 2024

As if … To Eden wandered in

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PXL_20241201_221031999
Untitled (Flows and veils; garden syntactic arrangements of forms; they hold unknown, and therefore dangerous possibilities)

As if some little Arctic flower,
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes,
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer,
To firmaments of sun,
To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
And birds of foreign tongue!
I say, as if this little flower
To Eden wandered in —
What then? Why, nothing, only,
Your inference therefrom!

Emily Dickinson