“There’s a duchess,” he said, “who sees the world,
and knows its tricks; has played some in her time,
but now prefers a calm and sumptuous rest,
which this portrait gives her: a clear—nor evil,
nor confessing—eye, now looking on your
newest world with ne’er surprise or wonder.
Her own flesh, once ripe with five-fold joys,
still looks plausible, as she willed, though bone,
unfeeling, is all that may remain somewhere.”
“In this farm scene something of my old world
goes on, and of its better imagos—dei,”
he added, my half-learned Latin blinking back.
“This washer-woman, bare and chapped of arm,
still seems to feel the hot work her spent days
did—arms, shoulders, back, knees, even in sleep
shaped to muscle necessities through time.
Her younger counterpart—daughter perhaps?—
the milkmaid, sylph soft, though hair is up for work,
forehead against the warm haunch, still half a-dream
against the world her mother’s face is hid
by steam of. All of life not just between them,
but in them, under them, around them. Thus art,
and artist’s work, are only to reclaim:
Nothing having never lived takes its life
from him, but something live may live again.”
So we walked down, into the modern wing.
“Now this, I must confess, is quite above
my art and understanding—these dozen stones
a-piled, and twice that many, here, laid straight
upon the floor. Many streets I walked
with her were cobbled so—Rome, London,
Florence, which we loved with each own heart—
each stone owned history too. Dante, mayhap,
stood on one when first espying Beatrice,
another caught the blood of Caesar, or
a saint. Stonecutters, for their daily wage,
had fit them well for Summer’s swell, Spring rain,
Winter’s contracting bite. We knew all this,
and lived and walked, or carriage rolled upon them;
but these, removed, no longer part of life—
though once they were…. Their history writ and pasted
on the wall here, informs us of some slave port
landings and one time sugar storage:
what means this now, dissected from the whole,
and moved for exhibition to continent
and tongue of which it has no part? They are
as meaningless as stone, unless one speak
for them. Once cobbles spoke themselves to us—
of elders, of their elders, and their work—
a city we still could wonder in, walk on,
be grateful for. And is this all displaced?”
We exited to a shade filled atrium—
Roman copies of silent dancing Muses,
a laughing satyr, three burghers of Calais.
“In your gigantomachic city, this museum
seems not to scale, all else proportioned so
Titans alone might walk and see the sun.
This to human measure, and flaws humane,
spacious as a brain, with old—or sudden—
colors, versions of the universe, and
virtue pedestalled, here and there, a moment
on an off day to behold, to wander round
and down the quick steps to the café.”
“Except a love by which spirit pulls mind
through body to another spirit likewise
reaching for that beauteous totus tuus
embrace, I wonder what this time on earth—
our only—is all for; so all my work
is hers, as she once wrote for me: Portuguese
to English, nonesuch without her.”
“That you I never met before are kindred
in that spirit I have surely hoped for;
that all might see through each to the soul, I wished,
in work, to practice seeing: truth begets,
and trues, our wonder—what we were made for.
That bubble you are bent on blowing big
the sharp world will quickly prick—or itself
explode, its heavy bottom pulling
the world weight of its surface to a plane.
Only love’s gifts last, all of these are art.
Gene Fendt is the Albertus Magnus professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska, Kearney. His first book of poetry, “Eternal Life and Other Poems” will be published early in 2025 by Angelico Press.
Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.
THE CITY KEY 