Shadow Man lyrics
by Owen Sheers
For Mac Adams, Artist
His palette is light,
in all its shades
and the holes it makes.
Conjuring with bulb,
fruit and a shock of grains
spilt across glass,
a dog, resting or dead,
a bird's kinetic moment
in the second before flight
or Karl Marx's head,
born from pebble and stone
into an absence of light.
He works with a darkness
behind his eyes,
understanding as he does
that it's not matter that matters,
or our thoughts and words,
but the shadows they throw
against the lives of others.