LEONARDO BEFORE HIS CANVAS
"When setting to work in paint, it
was as if he were mastered by fear. . . .
he could finish nothing which he had begun."
(Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo)
Within my brain lies, pure and clear,
A land of unfabled rocks and screes,
Crags cut from jasper rising sheer
From the slow waves of sunken seas,
Mountainous isles like dragons' spines
Cloisoned on glacial waters, and deep
Grottoes of hollowed tourmalines
Where the unloving sirens sleep.
There cities domed, unpeopled, plunge
Down spiraling stairways to the shore.
There, like a kestral, thought can range;
And at that country's secret core.
Her feet upon shards of agate rent
By iris and brooding columbine,
Sits my Enigma, innocent
And, like her flowers, androgyne.
Closed in a cone of emerald light
Is Leda, Narcissus, Anne the Blest—
Saint, ephebus and water-sprite—
Synthesis of my soul's unrest!
The light, the perilous visions fade,
The emerald is unbroken still:
The god in me yet hands betrayed
By the old Judas of my will.
Leah Bodine Drake