Michelangelo speaks
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| Portrait of Michelangelo (after 1535) by means of Jacopino del Conte |
My submit this morning about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel reminded me that I have a collected works of Michelangelo in my ebook case. I dug it out and found this:
A goiter it appears I got from this backward craning
like the cats get there in Lombardy, or wherever
?Bad water, they say, from lapping their fetid river.
My stomach, tugged under my chin, 's all out of whack.
Beard factors like a finger at heaven. Near the lower back
of my neck, cranium scrapes where a hunchback's lump would be.
I'm pigeon-breasted, a harpy! Face dribbled?See??
Like a Byzantine floor, mosaic. From all this straining
my guts and my hambones tangle, quite near.
Thank God I can swivel my butt approximately for ballast.
Feet are out of sight; they just scuffle around, erratic.
Up the front my cover's tight elastic; inside the rear
it is slack and droopy, except wherein crimps have callused.
I'm bent like a bow, half-spherical, kind Asiatic.
Not atypical that what is on my mind,
while expressed, comes out weird, jumbled. Don't berate;
no gun with its barrel screwy can shoot immediately.
Giovanni, come agitate
for my satisfaction, my negative useless art! I do not belong!
Who's a painter? Me? No way! They've got me incorrect.
The Complete Poems of Michelangelo
?1998, 198 pages, Translated through John Frederick Nims
He wrote that even as he turned into portray the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Clearly, spending four years on a scaffold looking up took a toll on his body.
It's hard to see his humanity whilst you have a look at his work. He achieved a country of artistic perfection it's otherworldly to mention the least. Reading that abbreviated sonnet places a human face on him.