Читать книгу Mercy Wears a Red Dress - David Craig - Страница 9

They hadn’t time to sort the modern—

our Jesuit guide called it “mom’s fridge.”

(Besides, there was the matter of donations.)

I wanted to idiot time,

go back to the Renaissance tripe,

him noting that the painter had revised

900 times. “How many people

would do that today?”

By the time we got to the Sistine: ceiling,

walls of Marvel—comics, Thor and Captain

America’s abs, I had to tell him:

they needed to get down there,

make some calls.

The best do not deserve the rest.

This was the Vatican for God’s sake.

*

It was funny; though large, the whole place

stuck me as homey, small in some way:

too many statues—even the huge courtyard

out front, which had always seemed

like all of history on tv. The stones there

felt gathered from backyards everywhere,

the whole show put together on the fly.

“We don’t have much money here,”

our young cleric said; and oddly enough,

that felt about right.

*

My son pointed out Cesena’s donkey ears,

Michelangelo’s droop: sheet of skin,

not smiling, hanging down—a four-year

penance from Julius II.

“Okay,” I had to admit.

“He may have revised.”