06/04/2026
We wear the Mask
For men’s mental health month I wanted to do a piece that represents the masks we all wear and what better way to do that than base this piece of one of my favorite poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar “we wear the mask “
Size 2x3 feet.
Available this weekend at the fourth wall art gallery.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
