Christine Perrin & Luca Signorelli
Luca Signorelli: Resurrection of the Flesh
At the San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto
Resurrection of the Flesh
by Christine Perrin
I stand neck arched
to watch Ezekiel's skulls and cages
come alive.
I've seen such corpses,
like black basalt,
preserved in leaden coffins.
They would turn to ash if you
lifted the glass. Their toothy smile
is the horror
of non-feeling
the pelvis, an orchid,
a bloom of death.
In this lush tableau of velvety flesh,
the Resurrected pulled fresh
from the earth,
look blankly skyward,
like us, still waiting,
emblems of spring in the margins.
Light spent, I drink my fill
and walk out into evening,
in a city the texture of dream.
I wander the medieval streets
back to my room
and find a fallen nest.
Vine and moss and human hair
are all intertwined,
imbricated feathery weave
barely cohering. I pick it up.
Dante in the Purgatorio called this
the hour that turneth back desire
In those that sail the sea.
The swallows sail the bruised air,
the fresco bone
finds bone—
if I turn to you,
if you speak gently—
Look, the heart, as these birds, moves
in its frail coracle, drunk
on jasmine and light,
bend toward my silence,
my brittle bones,
lift, beloved, breathe.
******
Christine Perrin holds a B.A. in Writing Seminars from
Luca Signorelli: Resurrection of the Flesh, 1499-1502, fresco, chapel of S. Brizio, Cathedral of Orvieto,
Luca Signorelli (c. 1445 – 1523) was an Italian Renaissance painter who was noted in particular for his ability as a draughtsman and his use of foreshortening. His massive frescoes of the Last Judgment (1499–1503) in Orvieto Cathedral are considered his masterpiece.
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