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La Resurrezione di Piero della Francesca

by Kim Browne

La Resurrezione di Piero della Francesca
for my father</p> <p>The dawn behind the hill is neither cold nor kind,</p> <p>Its greenish air hangs still, an older light restored</p> <p>From a stone box, the risen body calm and grave,</p> <p>As though the world beneath were thought of but not yet</p> <p>Made, the guards falling inwards on themselves like leaves,</p> <p>Their armor bent to sleep, their weapons to the ground,</p> <p>The stone itself aroused as if recalling forms,</p> <p>Each figure finding a place within the painter’s sum:</p> <p>The trees to the left, winter’s map—bare, bone, undone;</p> <p>To the right, the season’s flowers, dense, perpetual green;</p> <p>And between these two, a body nude and sure,</p> <p>One foot bossing the ledge, one hand palming the flag—</p> <p>A cross of blood and cloth, a geometry of faith,</p> <p>The face calm, the eyes fixed, mastering the air,</p> <p>Looking out upon them and remembering how</p> <p>The dreamer sees himself within this risen form,</p> <p>Such perspective governing even God’s ascent,</p> <p>Sansepolcro’s walls encircling us like a crown,</p> <p>A city named for burial yet seeking birth</p> <p>Here in the stone that became the medium of time’s return,</p> <p>And light, the solvent where we mortals learn to see</p> <p>What rises here—neither miracle nor myth—</p> <p>But stillness given flesh and proportion given breath,</p> <p>The painter’s measured dreaming holding the hour firm,</p> <p>His compass, out of grace, drawing reason forth,</p> <p>Thought, beginning again, in every dormant soldier,</p> <p>In every shade of green, the earth rehearsing faith</p> <p>In ash pink, gold gray, ochre, living turquoise,</p> <p>Clamshell, umber, infinite Tuscan silence.

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