Zurbaran's Saint Francis, by Mark Wilson

Saint Francis in Meditation, by Francisco de Zurbarán (Spain) 1635-39

Zurbaran's Saint Francis

Robed, cowled, shroud-benighted
in the threadbare-sepia of holiness.

Nostrils & mouth alone are visible
murmuring incoherent shibboleths,

his glossolalia of logos-decreation. 
He is more a monolith of kneeling

abjection, a slain-in-the-spirit stele
rather than a flesh-&-blood simmer.

Counter-reformational, & then some. 
Chiaroscuro charisma-contrapuntal.

Watershed-celluloid-lit profundity,
dark-night-of-the-soul’s an under-

statement for this Francis resisting 
Satanas. He clutches an inverted & 

faecal skull, a passion battering his 
taut abdomen. Canvas is Gethsemene

of tempera & bloodsweat, kenosis of
abnegation & piety. Macerated flesh

concealed by (presumably) a hair-
shirt: clandestine, ever-so-smarting.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson has published five poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013), Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016) & Paolo & Francesca in a Colder Climate (Black Herald Press, 2025). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, Tears in the Fence, 3:AM Magazine, Anvil Tongue, International Times, The Fiend, Syncopation, Epignosis Quarterly, Mande, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Enheduanna, Rasputin, The Writer Monk, Amethyst Review and Le Zaporogue.