Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist, by Norbert Hirschhorn

Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1607.

Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist

I, Michelangelo Merisi --
known in my time and yours as
        Caravaggio
painted this scummy episode:

a pouty nymphet who made
stepdad Herod come in his pants,
now refusing to look at the
head-on-a-platter, 

and besides it was all my 
stupid mother’s fault.

You might think instead this was --
        as you people say --
about ‘speaking truth to power’,
and look where it gets you.

No, for me, the really compelling
character is the executioner:
jug-eared, busted nose, 
the sort of thug you’d hire off the docks

to do some dirty work and do it right.
A kind of in-your-face self-portrait.

Norbert Hirschhorn

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He lives in London and formerly in Lebanon.  He has published four collections: A Cracked River (Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999), Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse (Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2008), Monastery of the Moon (Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2012), and To Sing Away the Darkest Days, Poems Re-imagined  from Yiddish Folksongs (Holland Park Press, London, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications, several as prize-winning. See his website,www.bertzpoet.com.