The easel of Mantegna
Empty-armed, like a soldier,
waiting for the deposition
still to happen, watching
as the rough skin is stretched
across the squat square ribs
and stapled, scraped
with a palette-knife, before
the morbid undertaking
of the gesso and the paint.
Or say instead, you always
were inclined to play
an active role in this,
our cruellest fiction: empty-
angled and pristine save
where you were brushed
with the death and cleansed
with the dizzy stench of spirit.
You are the awkward ladder,
the hallowed steps, the endless
air forever drifting through
the thin rafters of an unroofed
steeple – on or in or out of
whom the wide sound
of resurrection still remains
for us a thing we listen for
in silence:
untolled, unrunged.
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