Abstract Imaginary Garden (Paul Klee), Sonnet #510

Imagination is the canary

In the mind. (Reason is only a song.)

We’re dead without the imaginary,

The will to conjure what might have been wrong

In what we’ve done, or to confront the pain

Of a child we failed to love or console.

How we ignore the garden of the brain!

We stare only at the eye level bole

Of the dogwood and ignore its blossoms,

Think ideas instead of chrysanthemums.

Compassion, the garden’s brightest flower,

Can’t be described except in images.

It hides, folded in a secret bower,

Mostly unseen for a thousand ages.

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