A Quartet of Poems After Michelangelo, by Cheney Crow

Dying Slave, by Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italy) 1513

Michelangelo's Captives: Dying Slave
   
Louvre museum, Paris
carved 1513-1516
​                                                                                                        
He stands in a hall,
windows sifting light from either side;
shadows accentuate
the muscled shoulder raised,
its bicep flexed below
an elbow pointing
high above his head.
 
Only a thin strap at his chest
restrains him, but the slight twist
of his torso, the extended arm,
his strong neck tilted back
in clear surrender, soft--
an offering.
 
A single finger fiddles with the strap.
He has control.
 
His body isn’t tense, but supple,
& the grace of his slim torso,
the clear power of
broad muscled arms,
the ceding posture of his legs,
cling to the eye
of the beholder,
 
exude
a sensuality
at once modest
and provocative, a contrapposto
relinquishing control.
To this potent surrender,
 
the viewer is captive, not the slave.

Pieta, by Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italy) 1498. original file by Stanislav Traykov, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Michelangelo's Pieta                                            

St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome
​carved 1498-1499 (damaged 1972)

Consider how Jesus lies across her lap.
Laws of physics says he should fall,
but Michelangelo made him stay,
a disregard of gravity—a fantasy
we accept, as love redraws perception.
 
Consider Mary, a mother’s love.
 
Bent over her young son’s body, Mary survived
a hammer attack, a broken arm,
broken nose, a blow to the eye.
She would die to protect him.
 
Her vigil, eternal grief.
 
She holds her son, still her baby, thirty-three.
An Angel told her he was holy.
Michelangelo allowed the smaller miracle,
the width and weight of his adult body, still,
cradled on her lap.
 
She lifts his torso with one arm, her right;
her left hand begs the air, a silent plea,
My son, my son, my son.
 
No mother should outlive her child.  
                                                             

David, by Michelangelo Buonarotti (Italy) 1501-1504. Jörg Bittner Unna, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Michelangelo's David
                                                                                                   
​Accademia Gallery, Florence
carved 1501-1504
 
When I saw the David he still stood outside the Accademia,
subject to wind and weather. Carved from a single block
of pure white marble from Pietrasanta’s Carrera quarry.
Enormous. Holy stone brought to Florence by boat, untamed by tools
of three other sculptors before Michelangelo wrested form
from its more than seventeen feet, more than twelve thousand pounds.
Imagine how much was cut away, one stroke at a time. Rough planes
uncovered by a heavy point chisel and smoothed by tools with teeth,
a flat chisel to refine, then rasps, pumice stone to polish, to shine.
All driven by a wooden hammer.  Each stroke took power.
 
David’s hand that held the slingshot hangs enormous, disproportionate
to the body, grand as the legend of his storied defeat— Goliath, a giant foe.
This carved moment is the triumph of a boy who stands in beauty,
his face and furrowed brow turned toward an unseen — what?
A threat he does not fear. His gaze, intense, focused and full,
animates the space it fills. We look up and feel his power, this enormous
man-boy, an embodied dream.  The legend of his victory expressed.
We fall into the trance of what’s unveiled within a block of stone.
Beauty. By constant hammering.
 
Some of us are upset by beauty.  We have our reasons. One man, in Florence,
after the David was moved inside, pulled a hammer from his coat and pummeled
one of David’s toes before being subdued. What inspires violence to art? What
influence does it bear, what challenges? Art has power.

Yes, and threat.                                                                                                    
 

Rondanini Pieta, by Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italy) 1552-1564, unfinished. Julius Barclay, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Ars Poetica, the Rondanini Pieta

Museo della Pietà Rondanini, Sforza Castle Milan,
carved 1552-1564 (unfinished)
 
An arm, detached from any body,
rising from the stone that holds his leg.
 
Jesus and Mary form an arc,
like a bow tightened
by an archer, arrow at the ready.
 
The sculptor’s tool marks trace
his hammer’s path. He left that arm.
An earlier Jesus? His own? A lover?
 
The rest, a rough sketch, a scarf horizontal
on Mary’s brow, Jesus’ slender legs,
his narrow shoulders. Always
 
an offering, this, to the viewer:
Finish me in your mind,
Grasp. Love, desperate
and shorn.  Hold it close.
                                                                                                                   
Cheney Crow

Cheney Crow lives in Austin, Texas, where she enjoys the visitors and inhabitants of her yard: great horned owls, red-shouldered hawks, occasional rabbits, foxes, cardinals, woodpeckers, migrating Monarchs, a mockingbird that echos the backup sound of excavators working nearby. Her poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Terminus, Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry International. She's a long-time voter registration volunteer and teacher.