The cautious brush, the careful pen had undertook.
To read, upon the canvas, painted words,
To see, beyond those words, each coloured shape.
Until by squinting everything unearths,
And cracks the glaze for all emotions to escape.
In art the truth is bare, one thing is rife.
Beneath the surface dwells the artist’s life.
Fingers twitching, legs prepared to flee,
Afraid of what your eyes might chance to see.
Does it tell too little? Or worse – is it too much?
Their life to all the world now magnified.
A far-fetched dream, a broken past, the painful touch
Of one lost love, a diary entry amplified,
A slip, a luckless blunder meant to laugh and taunt,
The prickly bruises inflate the fiery haunt.
Vulnerable it is for those in such a trade!
For fruits so lush a special price demands be made.
One fine idea unlocks the past confined.
Should their emblazoned work be destined to go far,
Their fate and fiction have to intertwine,
Ripping ruthlessly each long forsaken scar.
Yet artists have no choice: they must pry out the heart,
Then their blood turns to ink and their soul becomes art.
Rachael Lum
This poem has been published in Concrete, the university's independent newspaper.
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