Michelangelo
Naked and unashamed in broadest day, Unmoved, unmoving, you can never share Our thrilled bemusement at your standing there. You grant our wish, and equally betray – Muscles unmoving, lips that cannot say, Brittle eternity of marble hair, Proportionate perfection! Yet you are Of stone, not flesh, in flight from our decay. You look down with a mute I told you so, Rebuke the perfect place where we would go With all the flesh’s longing to be fair: For in his marble, Michelangelo, If he had missed the giant prisoned there, Had formed no shape to shelter his despair.