Art in the landscape poem by Alice Kinsella
Hiraeth
Build and they will –
they will come to what’s built.
Tidal art, rogue boulder.
Collaboration with water, soil, the ebb and flow
of seasons’ persistent shift.
In a world where men built
pyramids, skyscrapers, empires.
the illusion of permanence.
In this structure of legacy
we pray art will lend us its immortality.
But even Rome fell, if not in a day.
To build for decay.
Admit the inevitable.
Dig the site of our children’s graves.
A burning sequoia or man, creation
and destruction woven. To grow down
to the earth, or unravel as spectacle.
Art in action, rather than the turning
from rust and rot, moss covered plastic,
a cracked herd, where hope forgot.
Build and they will –
they will come to what’s built.
And what of what is already?
Come, come!
To the remote, the wild, the untouched, unseen!
Come in the thousands but
(don’t)walk paths into bog, or take souvenir stones,
please remember to bring your rubbish home.
Benches and toilets and ramps and tearooms
and carparks and a cleaner and a bottle bank and barriers
around big drops and a clearly marked cycle lane
and a playground for the kids and somewhere for the electric
cars to plug in and a streetlamps though no street please.
It’s remote, unseen.
Build and they will –
they will come to what’s built.
And what of what is already?
And those, who aren’t coming, but are there?
We have enough ornaments in landscape
Does the craft of a stone wall have less merit
than the stature of artfully erected rocks?
Build it.
It’s all very well to tell
how to do differently.
But a wall built without skill will
buckle, fall. Better to bridge
the divide between.
Back to
a nature that may be
no longer. Missing an imagined.
Chuir an tseanáit cumha orm.
The old place filled me with longing.
To get out into it.
Immerse in the fields like a hot bath.
Roam, take and give way.
Break down the barrier between
expert/everyday
a reframing, a changing, a saving
After we build it, after they come,
(after the arm folding and humming and disagreeing and celebrating)
After we open the earth and lay down in it
What is left behind?
Alice Kinsella |
