Living in eighteenth and nineteenth century in the United States,
(With all my respect to all unions and the people they brought together:
United by what means?
Is is possible to unite people in the long term not through the strength of the economy
or the army; but by the strength of a desire, a vision, a dream?)
without any formal education,
(The beauty can sneak into a person in the woods, in the meadow, in the gentle touch.
I wonder, how did it sneak into him?)
Edward Hicks was sharing his vision of a Peaceful Kingdom in his wanderings.
(Quite peacefully)
he painted over one hundred versions of it.
PEACEABLE KINGDOM, about 1837, oil on canvas, 74 x 91 cm, Carnegie Museum od Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A lion and a bull. A leopard and a goat. A tiger and a child. Last suspended.
One cannot tell whether in joy or in sadness.
(Or perhaps the astonishment and the enchantment grow far beyond that division?)
They all listen. There’s a music or a poem up in the air.
(From where I’m standing I can hear only the color.)
The magic hour above the lake.
The encounter of the featherless hats and the bonnets on the naked heads
wearing the color of the soil.
(How much time will they need to unite in silence,
between the notes of the music;
between the words of the poem?)