On Caravaggio’s The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, by Lillo Way

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1602.

On Caravaggio’s The Inspiration of Saint Matthew

Scowl as you may, you only grow more luminous, old man.
The bright that covers you from long forehead to round shoulder,
that drips beyond your knees and carnadines your toenails,
is blood-bright.

Above your victim-shaped heart, crimson with fear, there appears
not a cherub fling-winged, but a real flesh child swaddled
in winding cloths, knotted tight as a grace, coming to count
and recount your sins on his forgiving plump fingers.

He is whiter than a wax candle in the moonlight and rosy too
with a rose you’ll draw from his peasant cheeks. He has flown
from the darkest light world of all, come for you, to offer you
a reprieve, a release, the turning over of a less livid leaf.
​
Lillo Way

Lillo Way's chapbook, Dubious Moon, winner of the Hudson Valley Writers Center’s Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest, was published in March 2018. Her poem, “Offering,” is the winner of the 2018 E.E. Cummings Award. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in RHINO, Poet Lore, North American Review, New Letters, Tampa Review, Poetry East, Louisville Review, among others. Way has received grants from the NEA, NY State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for her choreographic work involving poetry. www.lilloway.com