Gravity and Center by Henri Cole

Author:Henri Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Flagellation

(Piero della Francesca, The Flagellation,

Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche)

Soon they’ll knock nails into him, but first there’s this,

a lesson in perspective with two worlds coming together:

one gloomy and transgressive, let’s call it super-real,

a world behind this world, in which a man is tied to

a column—his hair and beard unkempt, his body raw,

though not bleeding—muttering, “I am afraid to fall down,

but I will not be dominated”; the other world is surreally

calm, with saturated colors and costumes of the day,

a youth’s head framed by a laurel tree, nothing

appearing larger than it is, so the eyes drift back

to the deviant, the melancholic, the real, emotion

punching through the rational—like Mother cat with five

kittens in her tummy purring in my lap now—

as a man for his beliefs receives blow after blow.

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