Caravaggio’s Jigsaw: The Burial of Santa Lucia, by Kate Rigby

The Burial of Santa Lucia, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1608

Caravaggio’s Jigsaw: The Burial of Santa Lucia
​ 
I see it again now, worn thin by time. 
My neat saw will carve my painting
to a thousand pieces.
A million solvers will feel the fury of
the russet featureless echoing vault,
still sounding its chorus of desolation,
 
while below, spotlit as was my trademarked pride,
the hulking workmen dig the grave, growling.
This will be easier, the white light on the swathed arse,
shoulders of hard muscle heave, while the pale body
lies or floats, throat cut for her faith, waiting in the void.
 
No challenge to match the pieces here
for lonely souls and families fearing conversation.
Snugly, the arms, faces, staffs and robes
will fit each other; the tumbled, broken mournful crowd
re-forming, re-assembling.  Just as I intended.

Kate Rigby

Kate Rigby is a part-time poet and part-time historian, living in Manchester and luxuriously dividing her time between researching for the National Trust, creating displays in a historic library, and reading (and less frequently writing) poetry for her own pleasure. Kate has had poems published in journals such as Antiphon, Scrittura, Cannon’s Mouth and this month she appears in an anthology of Manchester poets writing about Peterloo.