“Guernica Strikes Like Lightning at the Core” is an ambitious art poem, inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica as its spiritual ignition point. Through language, it reconstructs the relationships between war, creation, violence, and purity—transforming the painting’s visual tension into a poetic field of force.
The poem carries both the structural precision of visual art and the metaphysical resonance of myth. Moving beyond any specific geography or history, it seeks a universal reflection on human devastation and transcendence.
Commemorating the 124th anniversary of Picasso’s birth on October 25 (which is also International Artist Day), this work is not merely a response to a masterpiece—it is an act of spiritual creation, where poetry confronts the limits of both memory and light.
Guernica Strikes Like Lightning at the Core
by Cathy Xinman
At this moment, Picasso—
if I could feel myself
without shame,
without knowing good and evil,
without knowing nakedness—
how good that would be.
Gold on the earth is good.
Pearls and red agates are good.
Beasts of the field are good.
Birds of the air are good.
I give them grass to eat—that is good.
That I cannot depict the world
in more abstract imagery—
that too is good.
A vision impossible to realize—
bare,
stripped of colour,
only gray and white, without light.
Cruelty and pain fill up man and beast.
From the ground, trees grow
in scorched brown.
All brightness
offers its beautiful hues,
while panic and terror
are the invading tones of the earth—
like ivory black spilling
from an iron can,
like a spear,
in the swamp-like earth—
that is the act of the crocodile.
O blue eyes of Spain,
your sorrow strikes like lightning at the core—
strikes at the night and the burning,
strikes at the ancient steps,
strikes at the trembling of oil and Volga wine.
Fierceness and greed
return to the world,
like wolves leaping from the mire,
attacking the children of milk and honey.
Dew opens its innocent eyes.
The sky, so clear,
never gives up—
never gives up its wide blue clarity.
Ah, Guernica,
why must you hide
the secret that shakes the heavens?
Cathy Xinman writes poetry in English and Chinese. Find her English-language collection, Where You Love Yourself, on Amazon. You can also hear her poetry on her TikTok page. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
