Love Song

dVerse ~ Poets Pub set several prompts for this week, all of them relating to the work of Giorgio de Chirico. I chose this painting of his: "Love Song".

Anxiety is here that builds to war.
It's in the dark and melancholy streets,
it's in the very atmosphere that sinks
into the gut, the bones, the spleen, the spunk.
No one is here, it's not for humans, this.

But wait, we see the signs of man writ large,
though muddled and confused, as in a dream:
Apollo - plaster likeness, not himself -
a rubber glove, a ball, a puffing train.
What are these things to us - and what to him?

de Chirico is out to change the world.
These are the implements he'll use, laid out
as if a surgeon is about to cut
the cord that ties the world to evil thoughts -
He's working in the deepest shafts of mind.

Apollo, god of music, song and verse
is giving birth to man's creative urge.
A midwife's glove tacked to a wall to dry,
a ball awaits the long-expected child.
Art answers to the world's anxieties.

But no, I did not quite forget the train...
the artist's father worked the railway line.
A tiny train, it's going nowhere fast -
for this is not escapist art; it's here
in every now that ever was or is.