Untitled Canvas

UNTITLED CANVAS / Arthur Smith I've been home from the gallery since late noon, and all this time the swamp oaks have been rowing through the blown rain, another year Wrapped around their trunks. All afternoon I've been thinking of a canvas In which one of the masters Lets it be known that life is sad, though better than the alternative. The scene's medieval. We're all there, working switchbacks up a mountainside. Obscured by fog, and rain falling through fog, our wooden carts So rickety and overloaded there seems to be No hope, though the bronze and copper cart-bells tinkling all around us Make a soothing counterpoint To the steady growling of the wheels. So we go on walking, and sooner or later fall, And the living lay us out—as we laid out those before us—neatly, On both sides of the road, and then set out again, more slowly, Now and then glancing up At the haze lifting over a mountaintop beautifully shaped by shadows And the seemly generations of wind and rain. And so it goes. The old man knew, all right, sometimes It seems easier to believe that nothing matters, though there is a difference Between wishing you'd never been born and wishing you were dead. That difference is the meantime, though hardly mean 44 · THE MISSOURI REVIEW When you can be laid back, as I am, in a breakfast nook, lingering over Some blackberries so heavenly plump you'd find it hard To believe The earth could issue up a sweetness so darkly beaded, scented With its own dust. For this once, for the first time I can think of, I've finished off, without reservation, whatever deliciousness I could get my hands on, And I'd have a hard time believing it Myself, except for the magenta smudges Drying on the white bowl. Arthur Smith THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 45 ...