See how they hurry
        to enter 
their bodies,  
        these spirits. 
Is it better, flesh,  
        that they

should hurry so?  
        From above 
the green-winged angels  
        blare down 
trumpets and light. But  
        they don’t care,

they hurry to congregate,  
        they hurry 
into speech, until 
it’s a marketplace, 
it is humanity. But still  
        we wonder

in the chancel 
        of the dark cathedral, 
is it better, back?  
        The artist 
has tried to make it so: each tendon  
        they press

to re-enter 
        is perfect. But is it 
perfection  
        they’re after, 
pulling themselves up  
        through the soil

 into the weightedness, the color,  
        into the eye 
of the painter? Outside  
        it is 1500, 
all round the cathedral  
        streets hurry to open

through the wild      
        silver grasses... 
The men and women 
        on the cathedral wall 
do not know how, 
        having come this far,

to stop their 
        hurrying. They amble off 
in groups, in  couples. Soon 
        some are clothed, there is  
        distance, there is

perspective. Standing below them  
        in the church 
in Orvieto, how can we  
        tell them 
to be stern and brazen  
        and slow,

that there is no  
        entrance, 
only entering. They keep on  
        arriving, 
wanting names,  
        wanting

 happiness. In his studio  
        Luca Signorelli 
in the name of God  
        and Science 
and the believable  
        broke into the body

studying arrival.  
        But the wall 
of the flesh 
        opens endlessly, 
its vanishing point so deep  
        and receding

we have yet to find it,  
        to have it 
stop us. So he cut  
        deeper, 
graduating slowly  
        from the symbolic

to the beautiful. How far  
        is true? 
When his one son  
        died violently, 
he had the body brought to him  
        and laid it

on the drawing-table,  
        and stood 
at a certain distance  
        awaiting the best 
possible light, the best depth  
        of day,

then with beauty and care  
        and technique 
and judgment, cut into  
        shadow, cut 
into bone and sinew and every  
        pocket

in which the cold light  
        pooled. 
It took him days,  
        that deep 
caress, cutting,  
        unfastening,

until his mind 
        could climb into 
the open flesh and  
        mend itself.