This is another persona poem.
It also happens to be about painting.
I've been writing a lot of poems about painting,
partly because my wife's a painter,
and partly because I've just been reading
that beautiful literature.
This came from a very, very brief instructional essay
by a medieval Italian painting master.
He had a studio with apprentices.
His name was Cennini.
And it's just a beautiful, short essay.
It talks about technical stuff, but the translation
is in this gorgeous prose.
In the poem, a painting master is speaking,
and he's telling his apprentices how to paint a corpse.
"Instructions for Painting a Corpse - A Lecture.
You must not use rosy tints, for a dead man's flesh
is like the oldest gardener's coat at dusk
in a rainy country.
Portraiture, like gardening, is the art
of the solitary, who keeps long hours for nothing to do.
And the rose is an afterthought.
Mark the boundaries, mix with a little black which is called
sanguigno, place in sunlight to dry.
It is good to sit with the corpse while waiting.
In the Orient, disciples of a master
will flock around his deathbed for instructions, as
around a candle flame, that in its dying light
will sputter, then leave us to our lives.
In life, this was Giovanni the gardener, who was kindly to all
and lived temperately.
See how the lines of the mouth pursue a man even
past death's gate.
Therefore, paint the bones of Christians
or rational creatures with the same devotion.
Paint the hare not so it shall appear alive,
but without the sheen the head's oil puts forth.
Each strand, as in the blaze and mane and tail of a horse,
must be accounted for.
Men with active and clear minds become sentimental
at the news of death.
But not of death's body, which is chaste like a doll's.
Those who converse with dolls or with the dead
earn the right to be alone.
To set the corpse apart, use a drapery of violet blue or red.
To be loved or tolerated, as you would
a visiting niece from the capital
who must be sat in a corner for upsetting her milk
or for weeping at odd moments.
Make the face as uniform as snow.
The cold bloom of a painter's mistress before whom
he quails, and must choose to die of that sinless hunger,
or at last fall at her merciless feet and pray.
The mistress, the fair young niece,
and the brown old gardener appear alike, and are alike
disagreeable in death.
Each has a thin, transparent caul of skin
we call the cuticula.
A little wet and thinner in the maiden, but beneath which
lies the fat and lean, and all the blood,
as under a sheet of ice.
This man, who was content to die stretched out
in the early morning shade of an olive tree,
is content to pose in this approaching studio darkness.
On the subject of death, we have no authority,
except this speechless corpse, whose last breath
seems to flicker as now dusk sinks into night.
All our futures depend upon such moments,
without sentiment or artifice to save us."
[APPLAUSE]
I just love that kind of perverse, snotty attitude
that the man had toward everything.