Church of Art

I entered the church without saints,
without promises of eternity,
without the gold of absolutions.

There were barely unfinished canvases,
sculptures wounded by time,
and silence,
that ancient god
who dwells in men when they find themselves alone.

I knelt before a painting
that represented nothing,
and, precisely because of that,
represented everything.

There I understood:
art does not save,
does not forgive,
does not answer.

Art only opens
a luminous wound
at the centre of existence.

And I,
who spent my life searching for the sacred,
found in the imperfect stroke
the only prayer that never lied.

I touched the stone,
the painting,
the void between the forms,
as one touches the skin
of an impossible love.

LOVE

It is this:
building cathedrals
knowing they will collapse,
kissing the ephemeral
as if it were eternal,
and calling sacred
that which destroys us
and recreates us
at the same time.

When I left that church,
I carried no answers.

I carried only
the terrible and beautiful certainty
that existence
is the cruellest
and most passionate
work of art ever conceived.

Jorge Levi