I. Bandage the Knife not the Wound In the gallery everything is bleeding. Tendrils unspool across the varnished floors. Browning, fading plumes thicken the ceiling. All the violence here is nearly silent. We whisper it into the little signs, the stairs, the drift of our gaze at the door. Studiously, we clean the stains from the walls. So you, eyes on the canvas as we slice, Think it is silly of you to bleed to here. I would truly love to dress your wound But the knife has asked to be swaddled.
II. Art is Nice Men who Paint or Draw or Throw things In strange Places Are most Likely Told well Done you Have made A new Lovely Something. Others Can do That too. But they Find more Respect Comfort Money If they Use their Art to Care for Someone Else.
III. To an Artist Your art cares and buoys and cherishes. It Springs like new leaves on a dying house plant. It is nourishment at the tea-table. Drink it as a tonic. Grind it for a salve. It tends to the very many things you Love. Sideways gallery-walkers soften, Uncoiling and unfurling so gently In your certain, generous, steady hands. I know your mind is scratched and raw and frantic. I know you watch the ceiling crack in the dark. And still you mould your familiar clay, Its edges hopelessly soft and yielding. Please, take up some sharp and heavy something, Shatter these pieces and burn the pointed shards.
IV. After Calvary 1998 Chapter house, Liverpool Cathedral Christ hangs on the cross, comforted by the familiar Bedlington terrier. Force-bred dog torn together Slowly, years after nails were first Slid between the bones in those thin wrists, Unthinkable to Christ or the Christ-like People who couched the same Preoccupations heavy in their Sternums as h/He did. He whose dogs were more like Wolves, coyotes, dingoes, foxes, Would never have considered that This dinosaur-helmet and Those frizzy curls could belong To the same creature that pulls at Meat outside the stables or scratches In the sand for long and short bones. But Aitchison Named like a clarified pronunciation, Comforted by his familiar Bedlington terrier, Thought that Christ Human that he was Might have been too And, passing his own nails through Those wrists another time, Extends the generosity of what he knew To be the loveliest of things.
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Molly Stock-Duerdoth grew up in Brighton and now lives in Cambridge, UK, where she studies and works in museums and galleries. Her professional work and writing explores how and why we tell stories over time, to each other, and especially in the small moments. She has always written to understand things better.