Entombment
He’s slipping, I tell you,
through our hands. About to fall,
crumple back into the dark
in the corner of my eye,
just past that hollow of light,
behind that buckle in the slab
raising contours under our feet.
We’re skidding on this altar
like a bunch of shipwrecked sailors.
Yes, I know. We look up to heaven
for signs of landfall to keep us dry,
safe from the floods round us,
not at you, Caravaggio, ridding
your palette of eternal blue.
How much longer do we wait
in this cold cellar, supplicant,
enduring back-ache, freeze-frame
in a waterfall of grief, till you say
you like the shot, call time, let us
release him from diagonals of loss
into the modesty of the tomb?
You’ve trussed him up like some
starved sumo, knotted at the hip,
so the winding sheet furrows away
and unfolds him to their stares.
They’ll promenade their Sundays
with catalogues and headphones
for the endless desire of his thigh,
the crease of the almost-offered arse
you love, master, past the point of lust.
I can already hear that woman,
the one whose voice you always hear,
no expert but knows what she likes,
and she doesn’t much like this,
though still she’s glad she came.
See them now, beyond the glass,
that pair in lycra cycling tights,
patting each other’s bottoms
as they look up and examine us,
almost but not quite motionless,
auditioning four centuries too late
for spots in your next production.
Show our black nails to the dealers,
our brown arms to the cardinal,
poke John’s fingers into the scar,
dare them with the flesh and bone
of our new century, tilt us onto them,
helpless as linen, slipping like a corpse
off the cornerstones of devotion.
through our hands. About to fall,
crumple back into the dark
in the corner of my eye,
just past that hollow of light,
behind that buckle in the slab
raising contours under our feet.
We’re skidding on this altar
like a bunch of shipwrecked sailors.
Yes, I know. We look up to heaven
for signs of landfall to keep us dry,
safe from the floods round us,
not at you, Caravaggio, ridding
your palette of eternal blue.
How much longer do we wait
in this cold cellar, supplicant,
enduring back-ache, freeze-frame
in a waterfall of grief, till you say
you like the shot, call time, let us
release him from diagonals of loss
into the modesty of the tomb?
You’ve trussed him up like some
starved sumo, knotted at the hip,
so the winding sheet furrows away
and unfolds him to their stares.
They’ll promenade their Sundays
with catalogues and headphones
for the endless desire of his thigh,
the crease of the almost-offered arse
you love, master, past the point of lust.
I can already hear that woman,
the one whose voice you always hear,
no expert but knows what she likes,
and she doesn’t much like this,
though still she’s glad she came.
See them now, beyond the glass,
that pair in lycra cycling tights,
patting each other’s bottoms
as they look up and examine us,
almost but not quite motionless,
auditioning four centuries too late
for spots in your next production.
Show our black nails to the dealers,
our brown arms to the cardinal,
poke John’s fingers into the scar,
dare them with the flesh and bone
of our new century, tilt us onto them,
helpless as linen, slipping like a corpse
off the cornerstones of devotion.
Michael Curtis lives in Kent where he writes and works in literature development. His sixth collection, Long Haul, will be published by Redbeck next spring and an Anglo-French edition of his selected poems, Taking Shape, will be published the following autumn by the Maison de la Poesie, Nord/Pas-de-Calais .
Page(s) 52
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