PUSHCART NOMINATION
First Published, Issue 2, Fall 2009
VISCONTI (2)
by Professor Robert Lietz
If hands had not been given up or out --
if hands abandoned love --
wouldn’t they vanish from -- vanish
with these steps -- into these lives
made flush undoing the creation -- vanish
with the face of Beatrice -- of
Laura -- Juliet -- and with the industry
the spooling centuries
stood on -- and with her cagey gaze
and complicated smiling
/ these eyes that look like looking ahead
in time -- inspired
to understand -- inspired
to fathom heft
and what’s become
of
renaissance?
*
An arm in airy light -- meeting the seas
straight on -- Visconti --
say it -- and Visconti -- say it again --
charges the heart made hard
by ill-design and substitutes -- affecting
this textured place -- because
the fishermen -- the voyageurs -- in hues
and waves will read
the face of the new century -- the corals
built in time -- built
in these troths / these texts
/withstanding
the rubble and mad scripts
/ taking the thrusts
upon
themselves
and (page-to-page ) the brunt of history
/ the snake-coiffed nightmare
dissipating in flat worlds : a sentence
begun and lost --
found in these faces overcome --
in the mad spans
and fevered minimals -- and in
the frauds
extemporized / the catastrophic
null -- and in
the moods made strange
/ and in the moods
made
newsmaking.
*
Think of these faces made by light -- and
by light-letting panes -- seeming
to praise the hands that set the daylight in its place --
the hands at home with tools
that had their home in the green planet --
a sentence begun and mused --
starting with the nods you almost sense
from the Twelfth Century --
figured as corals build in time -- as the dawn light
builds -- in the eyes of village couples --
and in the eyes of voyageurs -- Buonaratti --
say it again -- in the green-bronze
sinewed stone the craftsmen turn -- Botticelli --
say it again -- i*n the words made known --
along the edge of perishing -- in the gaze
of village kids -- their palms
and fingers memorably intent -- and
in these forms come right --
come on dimensionally -- these
happy properties -- meaning
nothing / less than
full
resembling
*
Raphael -- say it again -- finding
these fruits more full
/ filling the tastes of voyageurs -- Uffizi --
say it -- and Uffizi -- say it again --
the teal and pearl made to breathe -- and
the cloud-flecked lapis -- moved
by charge and discipline -- a sentence begun
and lost and found -- in the voices
of village kids their families pull behind
in brilliant wagons -- building
their lives ahead / decades ahead -- as
sure as skin will seem to be --
and as these stones would seem to be --
speaking ahead in time --
in the oceanic flash / and in the tones
affecting field -- the tones
refused
in redirections of the sketchbooks
/ refused and brought
to something
more
by saying
them.