Caravaggio’s The Death of the Virgin

Not humility, but the animal inside

that brought him here, the artist fugitive,

pensive beneath the rafters of a barn,

hiding out, his hands shamed with blood,

the future coming at him with a knife

as he plumps the hay together for a bed,

then kicks it astray, his interior lightning-

struck, made visible by the suddenness

of his crime, the blood-thrum and God’s presence

hammering inside of him, the man’s face

carved onto the tablet of his memory, Caravaggio

pacing, tearing at his shirt, wanting God

out of him, thinking, isn’t that how the Virgin

felt, water-broke among the horse-stench,

the slop, pain thorning deeper in her side

with each heave, the child crowned,

Joseph dumb-struck, trembling, one hand

ready at the blood-pail, one hand turning

the shoulders, trying to unscrew the child

from his mother’s heart, though Mary

only thought out, I need it out, and the animals

around them lie down in the straw, already

hungry for the after-birth. But it’s her death-

scene that unveils itself inside of him now,

Caravaggio feeling the images encircling

his heart, the way men close around a fight,

the eyes floated out across the surface of her face,

the body pale, breached, something glittering

swifted off in a confusion of wings, though she

must be in red, he thinks, the sun setting in her

dress, the Apostles astonished by its crimson

folds, their faces darkened by the shadow

of the savior’s hand, the master turning them

away from the body, from his first temptation,

the nipple that ripened in the child’s mouth,

deep and red as the inside of a plum,

the infant desire flaring into blood-lust

when the breast was pulled away, like the fury

we feel when love’s withdrawn, which is why

he killed him, Ranuccio, his once-lover, the artist

pinning a corsage of blood onto his chest,

Ranuccio falling, stung, reaching dumbly

for his breast, like the gesture Caravaggio

will give the Virgin’s hand when his canvases

are brought to him, as if she were buttoning

her dress, because she was also the first to tell

the child no, wasn’t she? The first to deny him.