A Work Of Artifice

Penzai (penjing) on a mural (706 CE) — in the Tang Dynasty tomb of Prince Li Xian, Wiki Commons

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

- Marge Piercy

The Dream Keeper

The Gladioli Les Glaïeuls 1 by Marc Chagall 

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

- Langston Hughes

The heart asks pleasure first

Untitled Self Portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil

The heart asks pleasure first
And then, excuse from pain-
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

- Emily Dickinson