The Rivals

Florence, 1504-1508


A wily operator,Piero Soderini,

Who matched two heavyweight champions,

In the Great Council Hall’s ring,

Michelangelo the broken-nosed slugger,

The crowd’s new favourite,

And Leonardo,prancing jabbing fop,

Hated and adored in equal parts.


Through long still nights,Leonardo,

Muttered over his notebooks,encoding

The world with a bastard’s will,

While Michelangelo ,holding his chisel

Like an assassin’s dagger,circled

His sculpture,choosing his next attack.

Brutal in their mutual vendetta,

They raged ,schemed,insulted each other,

Desperate to win the crown

And cast the enemy like a rebel angel

Down into the Bottomless Pit.


First Leonardo,then his younger rival

The Gonfalier commissioned, their contest

Meant to serve the glory of Florence.

At opposite ends of the Great Hall

Each would paint a giant mural:

Leonardo The Battle of Anghiari,

Michelangelo The Battle of Cascina.

This would be the grandest room on earth,

The heroic city’s greatest boast,

The school of supreme art.


In capes and gowns of pink and purple

Flouting the day’s dark fashions,

Cardinal of his own heretical Church,

Leonardo walks the same streets

Where Buonarroti,surly and dishevelled,

Black hair over a clenched frown,

Bowls along in scruffy slept-in clothes,

Like a murderer fleeing his crime.


Monstrous ruck of men and horses,

Knotting,clashing,twisting,stabbing:

The pen’s spearpoint jabs and parries,

Swings across the paper,raising

A dustcloud of blood,dirt,dreams.

Slowly,so slowly the work progresses,

In Leonardo’s studio at Santa Maria Novella,

As other fascinations constantly

Pull him away for hours, days,weeks.


Bent over a vast battlefield of paper

In the Hospital of the Dyers,Michelangelo-

Greek fire fuelling his bathhouse fever-

Etches young men’s sinews and nerves,

Superb flesh about to be ravaged

In its final humiliation.Audacity has him

By the balls:risk the soul on his hand’s

Work is all he can do to live,breathe,

Self-martyred ,broken into ecstasy.


In the Great Hall young Raphael

Walks from one end to the other,

Sketching the opposing cartoons,

His soul divided by their splendours,

Resolved to reconcile such extremes

With grace;inwardly he transmutes

This titanic game of thrusts and feints,

And steals their powers for himself.