Florentine Alignments

Scalding hot cioccolata con panna
At the Caffé Rivoire on the Piazza della Signoria,
On a damp clinging winter day,
With so very little to hold onto,
So very little in the world…
Yet this richness thrills me,
Burning a hole in my tongue.

In the church of Santa Felicita,
I slip the custodian a tip to switch the lights on
And there is Pontormo’s Deposition, revealed,
All vivid pinks, greens, ochres and blues,
Christ’s body swooning in death’s dream
As he is lifted and hefted down,
Wondrous and weird.

In Peter Bazzanti and Son’s bottega,
Among reproductions of ancient Roman bronzes,
Fauns, satyrs,gods and goddesses, Socrates and Homer,
Antinous and Mithras, and all the rest,
I ponder my own ersatz antiquity,
Northern barbarian in classical garb,
Polishing my rhetoric in provincial accent.

In the Museo La Specola, I wander
Among the waxworks of human bodies,
Serene exquisite anatomies,
Dissected, disembowelled, skinned, decomposing,
Gazing out with open expressive eyes.
That fierce speculation of the Florentines
Has inspired me all my years.

Searching out the masters’ Cenacoli,-
Ghirlandaio’s in San Marco and Ognissanti,
Andrea del Castagno’s in the nunnery of Sant’Apollonia,
Perugino’s in the Convent of Sant’Onofrio,
Andrea del Sarto’s in the church of San Salvi-
I almost hear the deep music of Europe,
(As a boy I dreamt of astonishing the world,
All would hail me a universal genius,
Supreme in my every endeavour,
Surpassing all rivals with divine ease and grace).

In the Laurentian Library’s vestibule,
I thrill to the organised expansion of space,
The monolithic columns soaring,
The staircase of giants ascending
To princely celestial heights,
Just to mount these steps is to swell
With regal pride, the puissance of art
To fashion worlds beyond the common mind
With elegant force, brooking no mean restraint,
No petty taxation of the spirit.
See here how space is bent and forged
On the mind’s anvil, heated to fury,
Folded, mirrored, turned inside out,
With a will to dazzle and beguile,
These worshipful walls calculated to retain
The duke, their centre and focus.

In the sotterraneo of the Sagrestia Nuovo,
I scan the drawings, sketches and doodles
On the walls, made by Michelangelo,
Hiding from the Spaniards
During the siege of 1530,
In the darkness and silence,
He took some pitch from a wall torch
And, to forget his fears,
Covered the walls and ceilings
Of this tiny cave with images from his mind.