Crucifixion With Saints | Teen Ink

Crucifixion With Saints

April 29, 2014
By Nicholasjc BRONZE, Salt Lake City, Utah
Nicholasjc BRONZE, Salt Lake City, Utah
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The alienation of
five hundred years’ dust.
ameliorated
by levitating saints,
weightless bodies

Perfection equals sterility.

It would be easier, Christ,
to be weightless like St. John;
your asphyxiation was predicated on gravity’s consent.
it took you three days to rise.
i guess you’re a slow learner.

In the flakes and fissures of five hundred years’ gaze
the fresco crashes open
crashes
and is filled with empathy
by our accidentally weightless bodies

Errare humanum est

Long after we have lifted a brush and painted the world
five hundred years since the world entered our occipital lobe; was spat out as pigment,
since we screeched at heresy
and shrieked veneration to
our Lord and Savior

Long after,
opacity drained,
perfection was crystalline and invisible
St. Francis, St. Anthony, St. John, and Mary (Virgin & W***e)
gather around Jesus (Floating & On tip-toe)

Long after
our weightless bodies are dust
we color the world only through imperfection
we have always been the saints
crucified with Christ

If we were painted on the ground we would be nothing.


The author's comments:
This is an ekphrastic poem about a 15th Century Fresco by the painter Polidoro di Bartolomeo. Part of the inscription reads, "His stiffly posed saints, who lack three-dimensionality and appear to be standing on tiptoes, are almost medieval and do not show any stylistic advances of the fifteenth century—weighty, rounded figures with feet placed firmly on the ground."

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