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| Piero della Francesca Crucifixion panel from the St Augustine Polyptych ca. 1460 tempera on panel Frick Collection, New York |
The Dead
Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom.
Though they speak with more than just the season's tongue –
the colors that they blaze from the dark loam
all have something of the jealous tang
of the dead about them. What do we know of their part
in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,
invigorators of the soil – oiling the dirt
so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?
But here's the question: are the flower and fruit
held out to us in love, or merely thrust
up at us, their masters, like a fist?
Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots,
granting to us in their great largesse
this hybrid thing – part brute force, part mute kiss?
– Don Paterson after Rilke
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| Pietro Perugino Pazzi Crucifixion 1494-96 fresco Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi |
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| Gerard David Crucifixion ca. 1475 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Filippino Lippi Crucifixion of Peter and Disputation with Simon Magus 1481-82 fresco Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence |
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| Jean Fouquet Pietà ca. 1475 oil on panel Parish Church, Nouans le Fontaines |
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| Jean Malouel Pietà ca. 1400-1410 oil on panel Louvre |
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| Bramantino Risen Christ ca. 1490 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
The Sarcophagi in Rome
Old tombs, you never leave me long.
Your heavy lids still guard their dreams:
the murmurs of the ancient stream
roll on like half-remembered songs.
Though some have woken, their black eyes
as wide as shepherd's: all deadnettle
and stillness, filling with the petals
of new-hatched, bone-white butterflies.
I praise all things wrested from doubt.
Those mouths alive with their new voice
having learnt the truth of silence.
So do we know it, or do we not?
This question is the hesitance
that tolls in every human face.
– Don Paterson after Rilke
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| Andrea Mantegna St Sebastian ca. 1480 tempera on canvas Louvre |
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| Sandro Botticelli Annunciation ca. 1485 tempera on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Fra Carnevale Annunciation ca. 1445-50 tempera & oil on panel Alte Pinakothek, Munich |
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| Jacques Daret Nativity ca. 1434-35 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Andrea del Verrocchio Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist and St Donatus ca. 1475-83 oil on panel Duomo, Pistoia |
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| Filippino Lippi Madonna and Child with St Anthony of Padua and a Friar ca. 1480 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Johann Koerbecke Assumption of the Virgin ca. 1457 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Time
Is there really such a thing as time-the-destroyer?
When will it shatter the tower on the rock?
When will that low demiurge overpower
this heart, that runs only to heaven's clock?
Are we really so fragile, so easily broken
as fate wants to prove us, or have us believe?
Is the infinite life that our childhood awakened
torn up by the roots, and then thrown on the grave?
Look how the ghosts of impermanence slide
straight through the mind of the open receiver
again and again, like smoke through a tree.
Among the Eternal – wherein we reside
as that which we truly are, the urgent, the strivers –
we still count; as their means, as their Earth-agency.
– Don Paterson, from Orpheus : a version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus (Faber and Faber, 2006)