Hank Murrow on wed 27 aug 03
> "Michelangelo's Hand"
> from "Arias, Riffs, & Whispers", by Ann Medlock, Bareass Press,
> Whidbey island, WA
>
>
>
> Giancarlo steadies himself with one hand
> against the fabled ceiling
> as with the other he gently wipes away
> the veil of centuries,
> incense and wax, sneezes and coughs,
> all that has turned
> the Master's exuberant palette into elegant gloom.
>
> They have been here for months, reversing time,
> while the world debates the dangers, the proprieties.
> Are they destroying the irreplaceable?
> Making mundane the ineffable?
> Could the Master really have been so brash?
>
> Giancarlo smiles as his careful cloth reveals
> a swath of purple so vivid it stings his eyes.
> Bravo, maestro. Bellissimo. Ben' fatto.
> he moves himself along to mark the next small quadrant
> he will assay, bracing himself against a browned leg.
>
> With the speed of a burn,
> he pulls the steadying hand to his face
> looking at it in confusion.
> Slowly, he moves it back to where
> it fits perfectly into the imprint of an earlier hand
> pressed into the plaster when it was soft and white
> awaiting the exact colors of sunlit flesh.
>
> He stood here, just where Giancarlo stands
> his hands raised as are Giancarlo's
> his right laying in his figures, quickly,
> before the matrix sets, his left testing the surface
> where he would manifest a muscled thigh
> when the stucco's texture is not too soft, not too dry.
>
> Giancarlo shouts to the others and one by one
> they mount the scaffold to place fingers, thumb, palm
> into the revelation, here all those hundreds of years,
> unseen by the generations looking up in awe.
>
> Each touches, pulls back, and touches again,
> feeling life charge from the Master's hand to his.
> Joyful communion, gift of grace, a blessing and a wink.
> Grazie, Maestro. grazie, per tutto.
>
>
>
> Thought many of you'd enjoy this; and who is the artist here, anyway?
>
> Hank
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