Let learning be simple chalk and slate, corrugate
flags of a late republic
terror of form,
in the line of a breast to bony hip:
again ecclesiastic . . .
—NORMAN DUBIE
Here is the way no longer lost yet still so often unremarked upon & which recalls
Those old lessons of a hand as it insinuates its stroke along the sketchbook’s rough page & if
Reverie is a state beyond all forms allowed by the state
This sweetness of dawn psalm claws at the lovers’ lips even in the sweat of nakedness—
These days becoming so much less than we once believed—
& as Raphael draws the tip of his brush along the breasts of the baker’s daughter for whom he’d forsaken
A cardinal’s scarlet robes & though he died with Margarita’s portrait unfinished only days after
Inhaling the poisoned air of a newly opened Roman tomb we try to learn again every way
Art remains a last sanctified artifice of home although
We can’t help but taste how even our desires falter as the body falls to its altar