1 
There is no reason to paint, 
Until we are muted in nighthawks 

Incapable of easy words 
In our burden of silence. 

The words of insomnia 
Are uneasy company, 

Though we paint anyway, 
Ignoring all reason. 

An interviewer asks, 
Then, why do you paint? 

So, you reply, 
Why do you write? 

It’s a living ... and you answer, 
And this is a life. 


2 
The consolation of silence 
Is never quiet. 

If you were really quiet, 
You would not be silent, 

Though the painting happens 
In a missing time-slip, trapped 

As if by an unseen magic hand, 
A muted, perhaps distant, foghorn, 

But time sings, centering 
On timelessness—

Is this a life, when you say 
Then this art is living? 


3 
You watch the city windows 
Slip by a moving train, 

Or watch the train passing by 
From a half-open curtain—

Either way, there is insomnia 
Implicate in amnesia, 

As painting records private 
Moments of apprehension 

And the untranslatable becomes raw, 
With the last lost language still unwritten—

If you could say it with prose 
There would be no use for poetry. 

Bio: Edward Baranosky

* Publisher’s Note:

Re the epigraph by Edward Hopper, I found this expanded quotation:

“When asked why he selected certain subjects over others, he replied: ‘I do not exactly know, unless it is that I believe them to be the best mediums for a synthesis of my inner experience. So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there subconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect ... but these are things for the psychologist. If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint. Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.’”

Source: John Pototschnik Fine Art (28 July 2024), quoting from Gail Levin’s book Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist (link confirmed on 7 August 2025):
https://www.pototschnik.com/edward-hopper/