POEM
Ghost Frescoes
Maria TerroneBasilica of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona
A chubby fist and wing
float free, severed
from the landscape of human affairs.
Below, a barefoot saint
seems to straddle acres, beaming
casual self-possession, the divine
right to stake eternal claim—but
in the space between
both legs, a third intrudes,
last remnant of a man fading
to white dust. Nine hundred years ago
this wall was his. Reduced
to a toehold, he now spites
the fourteenth-century arriviste,
holding his ground with the ghost
of what he was. The saint remains
oblivious. Centuries sweep
around him like planets' rings;
the church's wheel-of-fortune
spins rose light
through plague and war.
Yet so vivid
are his blue and russet robes,
he glistens—a refugee
from a sun shower
who's arrived dripping wet, an idea
fresh from the brush of his maker.
Source: Poetry (December 1999).
This poem originally appeared in the December 1999 issue of Poetry.
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