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At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body
See how they hurry
pppp to enter
their bodies,
pppp these spirits.
Is it better, flesh,
pppp that they
should hurry so?
pppp From above
the green-winged angels
pppp blare down
trumpets and light. But
pppp they don't care,
they hurry to congregate,
pppp they hurry
into speech, until
pppp it's a marketplace,
it is humanity. But still
pppp we wonder
in the chancel
pppp of the dark cathedral,
is it better, back?
pppp The artist
has tried to make it so: each tendon
pppp they press
to re-enter
pppp is perfect. But is it
perfection
pppp they're after,
pulling themselves up
pppp through the soil
into the weightedness, the color,
pppp into the eye
of the painter? Outside
pppp it is 1500,
all round the cathedral
pppp streets hurry to open
through the wild
pppp silver grasses...
The men and women
pppp on the cathedral wall
do not know how,
pppp having come this far,
to stop their
pppp hurrying. They amble off
in groups, in
pppp couples. Soon
some are clothed, there is
pppp distance, there is
perspective. Standing below them
pppp in the church
in Orvieto, how can we
pppp tell them
to be stern and brazen
pppp and slow,
that there is no
pppp entrance,
only entering. They keep on
pppp arriving,
wanting names,
pppp wanting
happiness. In his studio
pppp Luca Signorelli
in the name of God
pppp and Science
and the believable
pppp broke into the body
studying arrival.
pppp But the wall
of the flesh
pppp opens endlessly,
its vanishing point so deep
pppp and receding
we have yet to find it,
pppp to have it
stop us. So he cut
pppp deeper,
graduating slowly
pppp from the symbolic
to the beautiful. How far
pppp is true?
When one son
pppp died violently,
he had the body brought to him
pppp and laid it
on the drawing-table,
pppp and stood
at a certain distance
pppp awaiting the best
possible light, the best depth
pppp of day,
then with beauty and care
pppp and technique
and judgment, cut into
pppp shadow, cut
into bone and sinew and every
pppp pocket
in which the cold light
pppp pooled.
It took him days,
pppp that deep
caress, cutting,
pppp unfastening,
until his mind
pppp could climb into
the open flesh and
pppp mend itself.
From EROSION (Princeton University Press, 1983)
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