Serenity in a time of crisis (Water Lilies).

When I saw this image, I was reminded of the light in Monet’s Water Lilies. And then stumbled on this poem by Robert Hayden, the first African American to serve as the Library of Congress' “consultant in poetry” (later renamed Poet Laureate). Returning to view Monet’s Waterlilies at a time of national crisis it’s so apt at this time.

“Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.”

—Robert Hayden