Talking of Michaelangelo
I'm thinking about Michaelangelo
while observing a calder mobile
in the garden of the Reina Sofia.
A spiderling floats by
all eight legs tightly clenched
on its personal air line.
This is the season for them -
remember how many
bannered out from the power lines
at St Abb's Head?
But I digress: M. would not
have calculated moments. points of balance
about a central point.
The main focus, for him,
was a body's centre of gravity,
the line the weight takes
from hair on head
to pillar limbs
and each arch of the foot
a bow pulled for stand or leap.
A flung arm shifts, opposing
a trunk muscle;
an effort of will springs
and unconscious tensions
stabilise the body's poise.
Would he have dismissed this thing
of foils and nerveless steel?
A child's toy, maybe,
the easy virtues of a metal fulcrum
and welded bars. What's harder
is to uncover from Carrara block
the body parts and attitudes
that mimic, in waxy stone,
the flesh and intent
of human form,
stilled.
Colin Will is Webmaster of Poetry Scotland www.poetryscotland.co.uk
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