POSITIONS OF THE BODY, VIII

You had wanted to go back, to step
back in time, through art: before Guernica;
The Raft of the Medusa; Executions of 3rd May, 1808;
before the weight of Christ’s body,
failing the rigid geometry of the cross,
documented suffering.
You stood
in the duecento, expecting icon only-the body
abstracted, formal, schematic-and Giotto
had chosen a greenish cast for the skin,

straining the upheld arms, skewing
the wounded torso and bent legs, bowing forward
the still face: Word made flesh, not stylized; dead
weight to be lifted down, angels writhing.

So the exhumation of murdered nuns

in El Salvador, priests and cameras
called to the makeshift grave (you had watched
in tarnished light): how the bodies

were awkwardly moved
(your hands clasped tightly together),
how they tangled and did not cover themselves.

-Carol Snow

Plate from Berkeley Poetry Walk

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