Chiaroscuro Spring time
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome
That was the season I couldn’t think or write indoors,
the garrulous springtime every strophe,
every felicitous story’s pulse
could only be crafted in tranquil cloisters,
illuminating belvederes, or rambling villas.
Luckily, it was an unbridled spring,
all immoderate daisies and sunlit pediments,
a bustling April, May, and June that engendered
boyish safaris and burgeoning wonder.
From my morning pages—
unhampered writing designed
as a treasure trove for the mind—
I grasped, like a low-key Sherlock,
a post-winter mystery:
my own offhand fascination
with rampant shadows and reigning light.
It gave me telltale pleasure to contemplate
the marigold blaze and lampblack elements
of myriad Roman landscapes,
and I revered, from my galvanizing bedroom balcony,
“The Mother Church of the World,”
the fascinating shadows of phenomenal saints
on San Giovanni in Laterano’s facade—
As I mused on how meticulously
Renaissance painters rendered light,
depth, and dimension
in an elected Florentine scenario,
I also recalled Chekhov’s imperative:
Don’t tell me the moon is shining;
show me the glint of light
on broken glass—
Finally, my shadow and sunray odyssey
spurred me to study Caravaggio’s Narcissus,
chiaroscuro in which the lake bank gazer
with rolled-up linen sleeves,
the lithe woodland god, can’t be dislodged
from the inkwell beauty of the dark water
cradling his spellbinding, iridescent reflection:
And how he kisses the deceitful fount;
and how he thrusts his arms to catch the neck
that’s pictured in the middle of the stream!—
I have brash Caravaggio, Baroque necromancer,
condemned-to-die brawler, masterful
aerialist of battling craft and savagery
to instruct my curious, firsthand soul,
how, in this contrapuntal,
spectacular Roman spring,
so help me,
the thicket-black shadow of my upwelling joy
deepens my joy.
