Vita brevis
Ars longa¹
Hours no longer
Ours
At my back I always hear
You know the next line²
Look on my children of
Silence and slow time³
And despair⁴
I’ll show you my vast and trunkless legs⁵
If you show me yours
I’ve said to the moment
Verweile doch, du bist so schön⁶
But it didn’t.
So I made some paintings instead.
They took a while.
Hours longer⁷

¹ “Life is short, but art takes a long time.” Aphorisms, Hippocrates
² (Time’s winged chariot hurrying near) To his Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell
³ Ode on a Grecian urn, Keats
⁴ Ozymandias, Shelley
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ “Stay a while, you are so beautiful.” Faust, Goethe
⁷ than even I thought they would