Thin as skin behind your knee,
transparent as a dragonfly wing’s
shadow. On such paper Michelangelo
sketched Prometheus prone
and languishing between visits
from the eagle. One day,
full of un-Zeus-like mercy,
the master carried the chained
Titan to the window, rotated it,
and pressed the black chalk lines
to rippled glass so that
daylight washed through
the drawing. On the verso he
repositioned the legs a bit, but
otherwise traced the figure unchanged,
whole, muscled, naked and unbound,
now the Resurrected Christ
and the world became tinder.
