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| Hands of God and Man - Michelangelo |
The Voices of My Children
James Hart
Summer air murmurs, buzz and bird song
fill a ground of dreaming sun as I lie there
becoming bronze, hearing how my two sons
contend their ninjas’ martial merits through
long bee-drowsy afternoon. Often they clash
their plastic sabers, alternately declaring
Raphael’s their man of stone, Leonardo’s
greater than Michelangelo, Donatello’s
never yellow-bellied.
They were too young
to know turtle heroes from urban sewers
honored namesakes from the Renaissance,
real warriors of brush and chisel as bold
as samurai in their ways. Vaguely invisible
as I floated on time’s intangible blank canvas,
I’d dream them sculpted someday as Davids,
sight their conquests over unknown giants,
limn their futures beside serene Madonnas.
In time, they’d fill their own empty niches
projected past the privacy of my closed eyes.
And if I opened my eyes to see them, I’d
be momentarily blinded by gilt sun blaze
arcing overhead in the Sistine sky, clouds
stretching out their godly hands toward
clouds, maples brushing verdigris glaze
over two little boys marshaling ninja magic
in the shade where blue jays flashed Giotto
sheens among the leaves.
All around me
on the palette lawn spread colors’ arrays
more real than art’s best imaginary hues,
boys’ bright toys a field of primary stars,
Looking backward, time is metamorphosis
as I become an effigy, dull bronze over bones,
recalling their war cries like shrill blue jay
clarities, the last music from this world
I’d choose now to hear not Bach, Vivaldi,
or Pachelbel, so Baroque and contrapuntal,
but the simple voices of my children chanting
heroes’ merits under syllables of sunlight,
and no poem I could write surpasses now
the music of a child, an angel reading me
the endless story begun once upon a time . . .
(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)
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