“Pietà” by Michelangelo
marble preachers
deliver their sermons
wordlessly speaking
through sculpture to
lately diminishing masses
depicting dimensions
exemplars of fealty and faith
reverential esthetics
a hushed iconography
coaxing ambivalent souls
to the purpose of prayer
to that peaceable interlude
quiet with dialogue
man with his God
private personal words
amid liturgies scripted
and publically joined
catholic artforms who tend
to offend plainer
protestant ministries
argue commandments
interpreted even to point
of iconoclast wars
schisms east and west
old and new ruptures
along the same route
Michelangelo traced with
the consummate grace of
his hammers and chisels
straight into the rebirth
of reverence for creations
by creatures the Creator
has made sculpture either
of flesh or of stone likewise
settles my ancestral soul
From my book Ephemera
Good one. I’d humbly say you did justice to the message they were trying to express in their reverent stillness.
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I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful comment
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It is the evangelicals’ flaw – this lack of imagination and suspicion of the abstract. Art, be it sculpture or verse, is ever but a window through which we look at the divine as well as each other. Your poems bring so many profound thoughts to mind. I thank you . . .
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to miss God’s hand in man’s art is to miss a great deal of both beings – thank you for the kind compliment
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“Michelangelo traced with
the consummate grace of
his hammers and chisels
straight into the rebirth
of reverence for creations
by creatures the Creator
has made sculpture either
of flesh or of stone likewise
settles my ancestral soul”
Yes!!
You capture the awe and gratitude that true art instills…
That is what I call true art!
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sincere thanks for your generous compliment
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