Quote:
Self Portrait
The pencil shadows the face,
Rounds the head into a sketch,
The dark hair, the thin lips,
Features of a Roman bust,
Tied through DNA,
The blood at Cannae, victory at Zama...
What blood, what victory?
Does the mirror lie?
The face, fattened and graying,
Has never confronted a bayonet
Not even saddled arms upon the back
Or paraded upon a field.
Perhaps then the reflection is not a sketch,
After all, perhaps a schiacciato
From the Quattrocento,
Links of DNA reach there as well.
That figure on the left,
In sacre conversione,
That St. Francis figure,
Draped in rags with a skull cap,
Resembles the artist, touches and
Sooths hounds with upraised palms.
But St. Francis was a pauper
Passing up his coat to indigents.
What starveling life has pressed
Upon this face? You sip
Cabernet every night and
Whine about your taxes.
Possibly then this countenance
Could fit as a bronze head
Upon a majestic stallion,
A cavalry man, a statesman,
A gattamelata of Donatello?
What? Calvary, horse?
Don’t mind the saddle sores,
Statesman with a shriek,
More like un gatto malato
Sleeping on a chair.
The glass now shatters
Into composite fractions.
An irascible son
De quello paise d’o sole,
Narcissistic husband,
Abbraciatta with my honey pear,
Stoic and spoiled, lustful and laughing,
Adopted citizen and patriot,
Flourishing the flag,
Inseminating the garden,
Eagle and oriole from Brooklyn.
Dutiful and sinner,
Pius and pagan,
The caress of family on one’s back,
Petulant engineer, cleanly shaven,
Combative tactician, with that mustache,
A writer with eyes.
Does one have to crawl
Through Purgatory to bring
Oneself into syncretic form?
Then