Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      September 17, 2020MantraMichael Harty

      Image: “Blue Bowl” by Liz Magee. “Mantra” was written by Michael Harty for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

      for Leonard Cohen, 1934–2016

      A crack in everything, he told us—that’s
      how light gets in. And yes, he always knew
      that this included him. The sharps and flats
      of life—he savored them and suffered through
      them, shaped them to an art that calls the name
      of every listener. The light that found
      his inner world was like a healing flame:
      revealing, not destroying, always bound
      to show his truth. Lost loves, mistakes, regrets,
      despair and fear, but hope as well, and praise,
      and generosity, and tenderness—
      all deeply shared, with ordinary grace.
      A cracked bowl gathers light, a cracked bell rings,
      and even facing night, a cracked voice sings.

       

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Liz Magee

      “This is the poem that I would like to have written, and the more I read it the better it sounds. I am biased toward short, direct poems that I do not have to work too hard to understand and which yet manage to set up a painting in themselves. If I did not know Leonard Cohen, I would know him from this poem. It suits the sonnet form so well, the rhymes are not intrusive, and the final couplet gave me a bit of a shiver! There were poems that looked more closely at the painting, but I liked the focusing on the small detail of the crack in the bowl and giving it a whole new meaning that I did not intend.”

      →