Where did art go wrong?

 Where did art go wrong?

Where did art go wrong?

And lose a sense of beauty?

It happened when the soul

Soured in a century of war. 

When inhumanity became the norm 

And cubism blocked clogged veins. 

Concrete covered nature

Excluding light and heat

Burying soul and body

Behind an iron curtain

That worked both ways. 

Teaching us that beauty is not a given 

And mercy must be paid for. 

Art reflected men who tried to

Kill each other and the natural world. 

Merchant soldiers and soldier merchants

With visions no longer than the next

Pay packet or approaching meal. 

Don’t blame the artists for they 

But reflected what the nations wanted

An ugly narrow nationalism

That filled the jingo soul. 

And so the horrid art

And brutalist architecture 

Tried to seal in concrete

The soul that might turn to beauty 

And to tender mercies harvested 

By a watching craftsman 

Who loved his work 

And embraced his art

And so the world endured

A century of viewing the emperor 

Hanging naked on the boardroom walls 

While experts prattled on

With ever longer words 

And ever taller tales 

That failed to mask 

What all could see

What the little boy described 

With a child’s simplicity.