Saint Michael and All Angels in an Initial I, by Randall Couch

St. Michael Archangel, by unknown/disputed artist, Master of Zafra (probably Spain) 1495 - 1500

Saint Michael and All Angels in an Initial I
an antiphon
 
How they crowd,
historiated,
this little I.
 
Serried wingtips,
                row on row
                             of burnished nimbuses,
                recede behind a striding Michael and
                             that sword.
 
For all I know
his gangsta birds
                are all that won me
                two good years
                and seven good enough.
                              Some fight.
 
Look--
                this Lombard painter’s looped a bowl
                in the Latin I: Iesu, Iudith,
 
my namesake. I grew up proud
                and haunted--
                false seductress, whore for God.
Like her I wielded
                my own sword,
                            and borrowed glory.

​
But now I don’t know.
Blades have done their best,                          
               not good enough.
If Pascal’s wager is a fool’s bet,
               what’s left but to admire the gift
                             of contemplatio?
 
Was that his heretic idea, painting
              the sea of faceless angels
                            stroke by stroke?
 
That the will to art
              like the will to God,
leads not at the last
               to the will exalted.
 
That I and the chanters
              of his antiphon
                           will not see face to face.
 
That my coup de grâce
             won’t come from one angelic
                         action hero’s sword
 
but from the company
of all those golden harrows.

Randall Couch

Editor's Note: The poem refers to a Lombardic illuminated antiphon page illustrating the triumph of St. Michael with iconography similar to this panel shown by the Spanish Master of Zafra, in the Prado, Madrid.

Randall Couch’s most recent book is Peal (Coracle, 2017). He edited and translated Madwomen: The Locas mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral (Chicago, 2007), which won the UK Poetry Society’s biennial Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation, was one of two finalists for the PEN American Award for Poetry in Translation, and was named one of ten poetry books of the decade by the London Review Bookshop. His own poems and critical essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A founding member of Penn’s Kelly Writers House, he has appeared frequently on its PoemTalk podcast, cosponsored by the Poetry Foundation.