Balancing Ourselves in a Broken World

Art and Poetry for Troubled Times

JMW Turner – Sunrise with Sea Monsters

How do we balance ourselves in a broken world with wars still waging in Ukraine and Gaza, and the bitter in-fighting among political parties so prevalent in the news today?

Sometimes art helps, like Turner’s exquisite “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” above and Emil Nolde’s “Dark Mountain” landscape below.

Or poetry, like this one written by Amy Lowell during the first Great War—saving and savoring the “color of water falling through sunlight,” and the “sweet taste” of those glittering, tumbling moments that fly by us so swiftly.

September, 1918

This afternoon was the color of water falling through sunlight;

The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;

The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,

And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.

Under a tree in the park,

Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,

Were carefully gathering red berries

To put in a pasteboard box.

Some day there will be no war,

Then I shall take out this afternoon

And turn it in my fingers,

And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,

And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

Today I can only gather it

And put it into my lunch-box,

For I have time for nothing

But the endeavor to balance myself

Upon a broken world.

—by Amy Lowell

Emil Nolde – Dark Mountain Landscape.