Seeing Is Believing

À la recherche du temps perdu

By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 05, 2015

Seeing is Believing

How long does it take
To look at a work of art
Read a book
Hear a performance
Attend a play
Learn facts and figures
Once done
The clock starts
Counting down
Flickering embers of memory
Some experiences
Never forgotten
Indelible paradigms
Neoplatonic measures
Buried deep
Rooted into us
Recalled in fine detail
Others lost in a flash
Barely out of the theatre
Fuzzy the next day
Not just the good and great
Bad things as well
Deep hurtful traumas
Pan slowly by
Like old home movies
Mistakes we make
A critic sorts things out
This image or performance
Compared to that
Not about the amount of
Time spent in contemplation
Rather the quality or disruption
Determines the sliding scale
Of duration
Mediocre most vulnerable
Nothing to hold onto
Now and then magnificence
An hour with the Sistine Chapel
Twenty minutes with Giotto
That one time hearing Coltrane
Alone with Miles
Fiona Shaw’s Medea in London
Still holding their edge
Clear and sharp
Challenge of getting it right
Often based on
Brief encounters
Long ago