Unstill Life
‘He painted a Divine Love who
subjugated the Profane…’
~ Giovanni Baglione, Life of Caravaggio
The
City of Valletta, Malta, 1607
At first the light is subtle.
It doesn’t cut the skin,
doesn’t preach a definition. Rather
it mates with the shadows,
too soft to be holy, smooth
like goats’ milk.
And I think, perhaps,
that here is peace.
The peace of not knowing
nor needing to know. The peace
of abstraction you can’t understand.
There are no angels here.
No apostles, no priests, no martyrs,
no whores.
This isn’t Jerusalem, Emmaus, or Cana –
it’s not even Rome.
You can’t see Lazarus, Matthew, or Christ.
There is no God.
At first the light is subtle.
Then it cuts the skin.
Its blade is almost tender like a mother’s
breast –
it suckles out form.
And slowly there emerges,
from the strangeness of this cataract,
a semblance of reality.
A painting of lines,
sinuous, knotting to the features of a man –
a mirror-mask of pain.
You can almost taste the moisture of his
eyes,
those bewildered, frightened, depths of light.
Taste the moisture of his eyes,
and know they catch your own.
Half-glimpsed, his veined hand twitches,
fumbles for a hold.
Fabric weaves like brushwork,
flows like velvet down the tautness
of his frame.
Each muscle screeches silence.
And the blood is almost beautiful.
“If my Lord would keep still.
The light.
Thank you.”
Stupid sod.
Why does he think he’s standing there?
Alof de Wignacourt.
Alof the fucking bore.
Still. I like his money.
I like his castle more. Nice, thick walls.
A man might almost be safe in here.
Safe.
Is anyone safe from God?
Still.
At least he’s not the Pope.
I am tired of running.
Running and running and running,
grinding the pigment of the earth.
You’d think I’d scrape some hole,
some deep forgotten nowhere
where life grows thin.
Some grave in which to hide.
As if I could hide.
There’re no graves for the living.
No shadows to caress the sunlit
guilt of living.
There’s no redemption for the damned.
Everything I’ve done,
everything I am
is breathing,
will go on breathing,
breathing when my skeleton haunts
my skin,
when worms make love to the sockets
of my eyes –
a vain mortality.
So much for death.
So much death.
Look at him.
The Grand Master of the Order of St. John.
Bred on worship.
Fat with the poverty of Christ.
Nice, isn’t it?
Where
were you, my Lord
when
God laughed at Milan?
People
stinking in the fever
of
their homes,
raw with the weeping sorrows
of
their ‘sins’.
It’s
said the city
reeked
of prayer. That from San Giovanni
to
the Northern Gate
you
could smell the pitiful stench of tears.
Tears.
Their
bodies drowned the river.
Skull-lit
faces ghosting her light.
Dead
eyes haunted by her waters’ sun.
I
remember my father
(I’m
not sick, Michele)
sick
in his eyes. The drawn lines
cutting
down into his face,
laughing
at his skin.
You,
my Lord…you stand rude
in
your health. Flesh
swelling
your armour,
the
cold comfort of your steel
a
less tender kind of skin.
He died.
But
of course he died.
They
all died. Go on dying.
And
the pity of it is…I didn’t cry.
Couldn’t
cry. Not even when
they
took him, shrouded, my father,
bereaved
of light. Even when
they
took him I couldn’t cry.
“Quicker if you’re quiet, my Lord.”
And
still. For fuck’s sake,
stand still.
If the boy can do it,
why
can’t you?
‘Siege
science’? God…
That
summer… That summer,
when
the lime trees sang down from Caravaggio,
their
leaves stroking the ache of their fruit.
And the ripening shimmer of your thigh,
smooth
in the grass,
soft with the dimpled kissing
of
the breeze.
Chiara.
My gypsy. So far from Giotto.
The
dirt of your hands etching your life,
stained
fingers staining the motion
of the sky.
I
remember the dark smell of your hair,
its
black touch moistening the virgin earth,
trembling
dew,
the warmth of your breath
blushing
the sunlight…
So far away.
I wish I could sleep.
Each
wakeful night
sweats
black without the stars.
Faces
on faces, dead like moonlight –
unholy
ghosts breathing my room’s stale air.
They
all hate me.
Baglione,
Cesari…Tommasoni…yes…
and
I know I should be sorry,
and I am sorry.
But
it’s too late.
