Leonardo

 

[Leonardo]

 

‘saviour of the world’

has it come to this

owned by an arabian prince?

 

woodworm screwed your base

paint disfigured your face

you hardly hold together, just

 

sight unseen for centuries

hid in castle keeps, job lots

freeports who may gaze on you

 

the object of money veneration

the highest bidders

selling their souls for your tax break

 

your maker believed painters

were grandsons unto God

recreating nature by hand

 

now restorers wish to save you

as though you are more glorious

than all the lilies of the field

 

oligarchs are on the phone

raising million above million savings

something nice for their old age

 

it has come to this, you

‘saviour of the world’

draw the crowds with your maker’s name

 

even if evening no one can say

if it be he or another or others,

leaving you, only your half smile

 

your resolute gesture of blessing

for eyes to read as they can

at the end of a desert gallery space

 

and an orb of the world

fragile as starry glass held in the palm

an arabian prince could drop

 

and eyes of penetration

and mystery riding time

and the general melee of existence

 

In recent weeks I have been reading the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. This prompted me to watch the documentary ‘The Lost Leonardo’ on Netflix (recommended), in turn inspiring the poem about ‘Salvator Mundi’. The poem exhibits the behaviour of poets who go up to a painting and start talking to it in the second person singular. Pictured is one of the central figures in the story, Dianne Modestini, at work in New York circa 2006 restoring the object in question.