Poem for Slow Art Day

Aegean Center student and Slow Art Day participant Julia Robinson composed a poem about our experiences at the Paros Archeological Museum on April 12th. Julia has dedicated the poem to Jane Pack, our host.

Slow Art

Ten minutes
an eternity
before we calm,
slowly
seeing through
into the mystery
of the cracks
connecting
to the heart
that created
these wonders
millenniums ago;
hearts like our own.

Archilochos calls
up through time.
The bark of his dog
coming out of hiding
along with the silk
over his shield that
he didn’t bring home
nor brought him home.
A boy is found
carrying wine
celebrating
the power of poetry
of the power of brawn.
How did we never see?

We turn to a disc thrower
his faint throw intensifying
the longer we give him;
our minds becoming
as his feet –
slowing unfolding
from their bonds
spiralling out freely
into the movement
of timelessness.

We read the headline
‘Lion eats bull!’
A stone slab
in transition of dying,
comes alive
under our gaze.
We water the
dead with our presence
re-creating:
the god power within.

Blown away by stones
their graceful humility
plunges us into awe.
Ohh face long past sculptured
I cannot see you
the Siroccos of time
have stolen your fierce lines
I feel only your soft beauty
snaking into a bird
as you dominate
the serpent hissing
around your belted waist.
You were petrifying once
your black make-up
terrifying,
but like Ozymandias
the sands of time
have robbed you of your power:
We have lost our fear.
Where can we place it now?

Overwhelmed we are
by so many ghosts
of people who lived here
– Right here –
on this island
we now call our own.

Calming down
we ground in a funeral:
sling shots bearers
never had a chance against
the fighting arrows
walking through the battle.
We circle the urn
but stop dead at the figure
who rising
is depicted again
as they extract the spear
from his side;
ancient story board
animating his life
his death
telling of his tragedy.
Women, hands in terror,
look on aghast
pulling at their hair;
we feel it, and cannot move on.

Leaving a memoir of the past
the warrior remains inside
long gone;
we communicate with them
the dead
this arcane memory
worn thin through time
lives on all too faintly
as we gather around today
trying to grasp
what happened to you.
What happens to humanity.

Time moves on
we look at a head stone:
a man talking animatedly
as if this day would never end.
His last conversation
into eternity.
What is he saying?
To honour the dead?
Hubris of time;
we cannot read
only ‘have to’
name of the deceased
words for the dead.

Was his secret discerned
only by the patient woman?
Relationships
come back to life
the longer we gaze,
the longer we allow ourselves
to deepen in something
impossible to describe.

And so we end
with a perfect bottom
hands brush
yearning still to touch
where the sculptor
left his love
bringing bliss
into stone.
Pulling ourselves together
we admire his stability
contrasting his
strong light lines
with her, behind
as if her dress
would flutter away.
We return,
revealingly quickly,
to the wondrous buttocks
almost embarrassed
at our joy
of this undefended captive.

Slow art,
no need to rush pleasure
feeling the love
of the sculptor
as our own
giving the inanimate
our imagination.

Collapsing time
we gaze ourselves
slowly
into these statues;
for they belong to us now
they are ours,
discovering them
quite honestly,
within
our own hearts.

–Julia Robinson