It was just in front of Nicodemus –
a self-portrait from Michelangelo
say art historians – and Christ below,
wasted with the effort to redeem us
that the text pressed itself against my thigh.
What a cliché to say that my blood froze
and I could compose myself to compose
neither expostulation nor reply,
only this sonnet thirty-two weeks on:
yet another conceived in Florence
and mine to keep my hands off now you’re gone,
a thanker of heaven for small mercies
and a tributary paying into torrents
of tributes, elegies, of sweet, smooth verses.
