Science Has Stolen My Art © Tony Winn September 2012

Your face looks strange tonight.
Veiled behind a misty disguise
Is there something you are hiding?
You have a knowing look about your eyes
You have seen it all of course
And our destructive reign is but a misfire in the great journey of this blue orb.
You can move oceans with your smile
Your gentle visage has spawned many a tender love song
And guided the poet’s pen across barren wasteland pages.
Philosophers have pondered you a while
Scientists studied, mapped and measured you
And yearned to learn your secrets through the ages.
Lovers pledge urgent troths by your name
And skim sugar-coated promises across silent pools of your new shed tears.
Madmen rage and wrangle and blame your monthly fullness for their fears.
You have woken vampires from their slumbers,
Transformed gentle pilgrims into raging werewolf slaves
And kissed the lips of sirens as they lure unwary mariners to their watery graves
Witchdoctors have summoned your magic powers
And fooled ignorant souls into thinking you a charmed sprite.
Hags fly silhouette broomsticks across your beams
And men have dropped bombs by your light.
Look at you now twitching at lace curtain clouds
Like a lonely spinster spying on the comings and goings at the house across the street.
You think you are so clever.
But now, upon your face, you bear the scar of men’s booted feet.
You are no longer a mystery, just a stranded rock
Gravity trapped in the grip of this spinning ark.  You are a lie.
Technology has unlocked your secrets
And stolen you from lovers, dreamers and the poet’s eye
Where then must I turn my gaze to paint romantic pictures with my words?
To now speak of myths and magic is absurd.
We know that goblins never did exist,
That elves and fairies are but shadows in the mist.
We know that mermaids are a fiction of men’s minds
And that the barren ships of heaven are all blind.
The Sun’s gold lion-drawn chariot no longer rides majestic in the sky,
We’ve learned she is no warrior or prying goddess’ eye.
We now know how the seasons come and go
And why the fields are sometimes draped with snow.
Even warlike Mars has had his weapons blunted by Man’s knowledge lust
And now they lay impotent at his feet , unsharpened, dull & blushing rust.
His crimson fury that coloured many a young boy’s imagination
With  invading monsters to be feared by every nation
Are all dismissed with logic explanation,
Abandoned, lost and stranded, without station
His shapely sister Venus who’s exotic exploits once held men in thrall,
Who stole the hearts of kings and queens withal,
Now is shown to have no heart at all.
Just gas and vapour wrapped in a frigid shawl.
We’ve even lost the wonders of each constellation star,
Who’s sky gymkhana once controlled our fates.
Where is their influence now that once sent men to war
And promised unschooled eyes the destiny that waits?
Where can I cast my nets to snare unconquered dreams?
What mysteries are left for me in these o’er fished streams?
My lexicon strings are now condemned to complicated tangles
Of worn out metaphors that strangle   art !
And leave the poet with an empty, broken heart.