Collection 8: Sonnets

Collection 8: Sonnets

Dark Lady, Michelangelo, Sonnet on the body of Christ, Bearing the Image

Meditation on the body of Christ

Lord, at your feet I fall, that holy place

where lepers and harlots lie, and parents plead

life for a dying child; so, grasping grace,

I touch your wounded feet, and tell my need.

Your arms reach out to hold my grief and shame,

to lift me up, to heal and set me free;

Your broken hands roll back the stone of blame

to bring new life, and now take hold of me.

But how shall I look up into your face,

Your eyes consuming with their unmade light?

For love unbounded burns me in your gaze

And I must die to live within your sight.

Your feet, your hands, your shining face, these three

Are mercy, power and endless love to me.

Bearing the image

Still without memory, still unaware

Of any possibility of future, there

Sprawls Adam in his golden thoughtlessness

Upon the green of Eden, where he is

Contemplated. While he continues whole

Completeness only incompletes his role.

The cut is deep. A trail of scarlet blood

Leads to where Eve too slumbers upon sward.

Adam’s wound will close, hers will remain.

New life is only birthed in blood and pain.

She dreams of a thorned and weaponed future where

A cross awaits the offspring she will bear

And now the image opens in her eyes 

Of Love most fully given when it dies.

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.

Dark Lady

Is that you, peering out between the lines,

The fourteen bars he conjured for your cage?

He lured you where eternal summer shines

And promised you’d be free from mortal rage.

We know a bit – he swears that you are fair –

Your lips, your breasts, the black wires on your head –

He says how much he loves your voice, but where

Does he record a single word you said?

So did he break your bondage to decay?

We neither see nor hear you. He’s to blame.

One word our greatest wordsmith didn’t say,

He hasn’t even let us know your name.

What strangely lifeless immortality.

Where is a living word to speak for me?