Yusef Komunyakaa on taking risks for art

Poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa, one of my favorite poets, addressing the risks we take to create meaningful art.

Blasphemy*
                      by Yusef Komunyakaa

You named those lies clustered
in each rib cage. Attached
to some circular truth, you
glimpsed soldiers of fortune
sweeping their footprints
with branches of mistletoe.
You showed them the corpse garden
couldn't keep blooming,
not forever--black bags
of songs split open at sunrise.
You copied down the earthworm's
calligraphy, broke illusion's hymen,
uncovered the scars smiling
under Dutch silk, translated
the hyena's soliloquy.
You carbon-dated the skull
paperweight on the commissioner's desk
& filled in with charcoal
these mental lapses--
when all the gone ones
resurfaced as dancing rags
in the wind, you named
the beast upon the gallows tree,
its sag-belly dragging
the ground. You appraised
the medieval rot taking hold
of dirt floors, crawling up
the cathedral's high rafters.
Madness, you brought it home.

          *Harold Rubin was tried for blasphemy on the basis of his artwork and exiled from South Africa.

from Neon Vernacular, 1993