Meaning 2

Put bluntly, a poem should grab by the balls,
wring out every kind of emotion:
happiness and shame
and in sharing offer a lotion.

It is much the same with a painting.
Paint does not speak,
nor canvas, nor a gilded frame;
but a painting does,
goes directly through the eye
to the heart.

Paintings seek to recover emotion,
as a good poem does,
and directly elicit response.
Thus, communication
is the point of all visual art
as well as aural.

We are asked to respond with emotion,
let our soul cry out
in reply
to our own excitement,
our joys, our doubts,
perhaps a simply wry understanding.

All art's about
what humanity has in common;
it lets us share beyond political boundaries:
our love, our lies,
the beauty we see and the horror
that makes up our lives:
lives precious, intolerable,
and short:
replayed in art.