Titian's End

No longer did he finish anything;

Day after day in the large draughty studio,

Reworking the canvases over and over,

Never quite completing a single one,

Terrified to end, to let go.

For months he would leave a painting,

Scarcely even glancing at it,

Then return to the battle,

Glaring with mortal rage,

Digging in with his fingers.

He had outlived them all, his so-called peers,

There was no one left to defeat now,

No-one to work for but himself;

Eyes failing, but his spirit savage,

Desperate against the darkness,

Spewing paint like blood.

(A young bravado’s lust still, tempered

By an old man’s guile, he knew

Precisely how much truth to mix

With untruth on his palette.

Curse the world for forcing him

Into venal conniving and grovelling

To vainglorious patrons, who disdained

To pay on time for his precious labours

So that he must whine and importune

With magniloquent flattery to wheedle

His dues from those avaricious hands).

Blackclad and monk-gaunt,

Gnarled, feisty, skullcapped and hook-nosed,

He toiled on, while burning corpses’ stench

Fogged over the Venice Lagoon,

Mingling with shit-reek and slime;

Ceaselessly, the plague boats called

From house to house, along fetid canals,

Hired brutes smashing down doors

To pillage the rooms of the dead.

God was visiting his wrath upon the city

For inveterate sins; as parents abandoned

Their own sick children, husbands their wives,

And Titian raised his brush once more

To cut another stroke into the scene;

Marsyas was hanging upside down,

Accepting his punishment serenely,

Initiated into the highest heavens of pain;

Where diagonals connected in a star.