delta document II

Picasso boasted that great artists steal
they build on pilings in beholders' heads
it fails as Art if it can't make you feel
what's too abstract lies on the canvas, dead
communication needs a common tongue
a basis-set of shared experience
that makes saliva flow when bells get rung
or else it's just opaque, not merely dense
our common culture primes us to  receive
the painter's or the poet's offering
we take to heart what they'd have us believe
without the need to spell out everything
relentlessly, this edifice of words
builds on what those long gone wrote, said, and heard