Just Eight Lines

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay…
W.B. Yeats

Just eight lines to draw a bull,
Measure out a life when done perfectly.
A few clean strokes that divulge
Most of what we know,
Something like an epitaph that stands
Representing knowledge.
Picasso’s stature rests on it:
A century’s torment balances on the pen,
But it is woven deeper still in memory,
Gradually eased by time.
A curious procession winds through
All the proliferating acts of mankind,
Vulgar in a certain measure, decorous for the most part,
And utterly barren of redemption,
Except in an extravagant, ill-fitting frame
Signed below with no discernible name.

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Picasso once reduced the representation of a bull to a few lines. The implication was that nature had been represented in various stages of realism leading up to this skillful abstraction. The act of creation, however, has a guiding force that cannot be identified with a name.