By Viktor Sosnora
"I — is we"
Art is the shrine of fools,
Payback for crucifixions.
The artist - both Caesar and Rubicon
Of loves and perversions,
Is athletic, ascetic, is ring-stone and foe,
“To all deaths, hallelujah!” - screams Cain,
Who is, all at once: a spit and a kiss,
And a stone at the gates of Heaven,
Is kink-happy swinger and puritan mom,
The commoner mantled in purples,
The masculine master presenting as femme,
The victim and, yes, the rapist.
Inferno and laudanum, slime and ambrosia,
Full truth and arrival at Mecca;
Is Hermes's grimace, violas and whistles;
The germ and the vast supernova.
A lash and a cutter, a plough made of sabers,
A clown of all possible tortures!
A hangman, a pilgrim, a target of bullets
And a shell in its target, at bull's eye;
Is Vulcan and Sysyphus, laurels and thorns,
Is Maenads as much as hyenas,
With tenderest burning, in artists conform
Malicious intentions and genius!
Now if, flaring axes, falls over this Earth
That first and that ultimate Judgement,
And stands before God every bedroom and court,
Each architect and every palace,
All heresies, shrines, and all verities, lies
Behind all complicity's shame...
To God's "Who are You?",
Only artist replies, "I – is",
While you all crawl away,
You're blameless, naive, and you're hardly so new,
You're crowds, merely crowds, you'll get out!
Not artists. And they alone get the blame.
Each is, in themselves, and that’s all.