Life is short and Art is long, went the old song.
How typical of Art to sing such a thing. Life
Was the dark forest inhabited by Art. Art was
The dark forest mesmerizing Life. Life was
The scrap of Life that Art persuaded was one.
And if Life was singular, a singular beast, then,
Yes, in that beast, as that beast, Life was
Short. Art, which could wing like a bird between
The beastly forests, seemed longer. But if Life
We’re parsed by Art as Life itself, then no. Life
Was burning, hungering, eating and mating itself
Long, long before anything arrived in it like Art.
It was apples and oranges, the Tree of Art
And the Tree of Life. It was snakes and ladders,
Yearning and mythology, hosts and parasites,
And who would say because some parasites
Escaped each dying host to invade another
That hosts were brief and parasites enduring?
No hosts, no parasites, and the turnover
In the forest of the host has always been
Many brief forests of parasites. Art is short
And recenter than Life. But Art has a point. Art
Is momentary in the host, but in the moment
It is immortal. So wrote the host shedding
Spores of imported words from poems’ canopic
Portals. Life, as Art knew it, began with Art, and
Neither ends without the other. Death chortled.
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