Wabi-sabi

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Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed

……………….. —Bob Dylan

.pieta

upon first hearing
I knew at once the perfection
Dylan wove that startling verse around

as if anything on earth could be so flawless
as to deserve the divinity of that word
which says:
……………………...could be here now

and so well timed that all the angles of Pythagoras
and all the angels
of Einstein’s curly gravity
and all of Kepler’s mathematical motions
and all of Shakespeare’s mythic tragedies
are met in streets laid in English Bond
as beautifully sublime as the Pietá 
whose only imperfection 
is in the brutal timeless tale it tells in stone
in which Michelangelo distilled
so perfectly
the failed perfection of the world
.

Jim Culleny
3/25/16

Editorial Note:
Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art
of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature.