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| Christophe Veyrier Dying Achilles 1683 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
Achilles
Down into the folly, you took my hand.
Moon red under the scud cloud,
the sheep bearing their gray, muted realm
past the thistle and the ruined elm,
and all silent, silent as cloth.
We had taken the rock-guarded path
up a horizon shaken on the west wind.
Below us, the closed land spread out
toward an old hall lit by candles
against the sparking wood. Somewhere
the clink of a chain
and the dim almost rustle of evening.
The cracked mirror
of Capability's lake turned livid, glinting
like a flutter of moths. Then we stepped down
onto the field of ghostly cattle
moving their great horned helmets against us.
The air was antique with breath.
And there stood Achilles, the famous bull,
proudly aside from the herd, massive, scarred,
nursing his anger.
He turned toward us in his naked heat.
– William Logan
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| Gianlorenzo Bernini Bust of Thomas Baker ca. 1638 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Giovanni Antonio Gualterio Crucifix Figure ca. 1599 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous Spanish sculptor Repentant Thief from Crucifixion Group ca. 1650 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous sculptor working in France or the Netherlands Crucifix Figure ca. 1700-1730 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum |
from The Crucifix
Have you ever tried to hold the attention of a child?
Being God is something like that, if you take it seriously.
The guilty ones are too meek and mild,
The earnest ones behave deliriously.
I wanted them to be gently wild.
– Augustine Bowe
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| Alessandro Algardi Portrait of Cardinal Paolo Emilio Zacchia ca/ 1650 terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Cosimo Fancelli A Widowed Lady ca. 1660 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Foggini Bust of Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici ca. 1700 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Giuseppe Mazzuoli Bust of Cardinal Bernardino Panciatichi 1714 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous English sculptor Mourning Child with Hour Glass (from a Tomb) ca. 1700-1720 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
from An hour is not a house
An hour is not a house,
a life is not a house,
you do not go through them as if
they were doors to another.
Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,
four walls, a ceiling.
An hour can be dropped like a glass.
– Jane Hirshfield
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| Anonymous sculptor Winter ca. 1700-1720 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Antonio Corradini Apollo flaying Marsyas ca. 1710-1750 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Dominique Lefevre Fall of Phaeton ca. 1700-1711 marble Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Anonymous French sculptor Fan Handle ca. 1650 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum |
– quoted lines originally published in Poetry (Chicago)