ARTIST Poem: Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective., by Janet Daily

There.

Walking through the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
On my way to Iowa.

Spoke to Gertrude Stein.
Spoke to a harlequin.
Came to the painting titled Guernica.

Stopped.

I’d seen a picture of the painting
On a postcard that my art
Teacher showed me once.

Now I could see that picture
Was like a small printed map
Of this painting.

Schematic.

And I saw the people
And the people came and went,
And the people were dead.

They had marked the children.
They held the children
The children were dead.

There.

-by Janet Daily, August 1980