Mary Jo Salter
from the blind intensity
of her gaze, to the somewhat swollen
parted lips, to the parting,
above her rumpled chemise,
of two soft breasts his hands
lifted from stone, Bernini’s
lover had been designed
to please—to have and hold
in his own eyes as forever
undone and to-be-done-to,
a melting readiness.
Oh the inconstant Costanza,
true-to-life but untrue!
whose drawing power, coiled
as the heavy braid he pulled
behind her head, yet loose
as the involving tendrils
that tumbled to one side,
originated from
within a designing woman.
If either alone suffices
(love or art, that is)
to lead a man to believe
whole days can be best spent
lost in a woman’s hair,
how could he not have wept
at the upswept and downfallen
tresses of one who was
both singular ideal—a
thing he’d hacked from rock
into his own landmark
in portraiture, quintessence
of the sinuous baroque—and
all too two-faced mistress?
That she was capable
of deception—this was fine,
one guesses: a frisson
at first that she (the wife
of his apprentice) gave
in private no resistance
to a greater man’s assistance.
But now the great man’s brother?
His brother? When the rumor
reached him, Bernini sent
a razor-bearing servant
to do what must be done.
He wasn’t going to kill her.
No, but he’d leave a scar,
a sort of Kilroy was here;
he’d affix his stamp, he’d fix her
once and for all, for good-indeed,
he’d have some thug
or other slash her face,
her living flesh, with a tool
not so unlike the one
that he alone, the master,
had been skilled enough to wield,
watching the marble yield
to each sweet, painstaking stroke
of chisel against cheek
until, so real, she’d fairly
cried out for more.