Where have all the artists gone?
There was a time when art was art,
A thing of beauty and of joy,
Not just a toy
For arrant intellectuals to play with,
A time when poetry was passion,
But now passion’s out of fashion,
And the word itself means only lust.
There was a time when eyes could read
The tale told by the brush,
When paint reflected images,
And stone the likeness of a bust –
Before the times of change.
But now the times of change are changing.
You old men of the wartime,
Fathers of destruction,
Who burst apart the heart of life And poisoned life with fission,
You fathered and you fostered
A doubting generation,
Cynics without soul to feel
The lure of beauty’s call,
Whose hearts are barren as your hopes, Poseurs and scoffers all.
They who make a paradox
Of life and love and living,
Ironically they make of art
The same mocking contradiction.
What else when they know naught else But paint despair on canvas?
What else but sculpt in tortured steel When twisting steel surrounds us?
What else but twist and jar the flow of words, And scoff at rhyme,
When soothing cadence was no part of music In their time?
Artists can only trace the doubts
That turn and twist and wind,
Searching, groping blindly
In each distracted mind,
And poets search their minds to tell
Disordered thoughts that cascade through them,
But I have walked the barrenness Of my own lonely mind,
And would not share that wretchedness With any of mankind.
And I have gazed into the eyes of hope Born of despair.
I have nursed a child in love
And seen the beauty there.
Watch, you fathers.
You men who tear at dreams with your despair, Who plague with doubt, distort,
And make of ugliness a work of art,
Watch.
But I cannot teach my elders
As I learn from my child.
Watch, old men, the way he watches. Watch him flinging doubt aside.
I shall not show him “art”,
Nor teach him to respect the twisted things Your generation brings,
The products of your own sick minds.
This child’s eyes shall wander with the butterflies, And gaze in wonder at the skies.
This child shall find true beauty on his own, As any child left to himself will seek the Truth. This child and others like him
Will teach what they have seen
Through eyes of love.
Then will be no need
For the hypocrisy and greed
That let men feed
On others’ blindness.
You doubt me? You say that dreams are dead,
And hope is gone, and beauty lost forever? Listen, then!
There is a shell.
Pressed to an ear
It tells of beauty.
Can you hear?
Within this shell
There swells the sound of music Bursting wide across a magic harbour, Echoing through sails,
A sound that hails a nation waking, Passions roused,
To woo a virgin world.
Listen then.
Hold this shell up to your ear and listen To a music that is thunder.
And as it rends the skies
The quick and dead might rise
To judge each hypocrite who lies When he cries “Beauty!”
And they might grasp
At monstrous “works of art”
And tear them down around the ears of every clown Who dares pretend he creates beauty.
And those who know true beauty
Might put their words to music
That would stir men’s very souls,
Until our souls are free
To sing and soar and fly
And burst the sky with music,
Till voices ring like angels’ choiring,
Resounding round the world,
And the world would stop to listen.
Then hold the world up to your ear And listen.
You will hear
The sounds of hope, and love, and laughter. Despair will cry in vain
And fade into a whimper,
And men might dream again.