Nearly blind, it’s all behind him now.
Four scaffolded years risking a fall
like Adam’s and the wrath of Julius
who struck him once for being slow.
Gone, the strength for travertine, all the figures
he could loosen have been freed,
and he’s burned his studies, hundreds of them,
let them go, those young men twisting
in their mighty attitudes, bodies floating heavenwards
in specks of white. So much done, and yet he works
all night sometimes, light pooling
from the candle in his makeshift crown,
a stick of graphite as he fills what’s left of time,
Love crucified, dying and living in the line.
Michelangelo’s Late Drawings
Show Comments ()
The latest from america
A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, by Father Terrance Klein
Pope Francis’ clinical condition “remains stable” within “the complexity of his overall situation,” and the chest X-ray carried out yesterday “confirmed the improvements that had been registered in the previous days.”
Tens of thousands of tourists flock to Ireland each year for the St. Patrick’s Day Festival. But in the midst of the concerts, parades and art installations, one figure is strikingly absent—Patrick himself.
During the nearly two-hour liturgy, Cardinal McElroy encouraged the faithful of his new archdiocese to be “pilgrims of hope in a wounded world.”