San Biagio, at Montepulciano

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew

The ways you promise what you lack;

And that your bodies, like your souls,

Always slip from our grasping hands.

Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint,

As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's

Architects still offer more than ours,

Who only build a scaffolding of dreams.

He dreamed, all the same; but on that day,

He gave a better use to beauty's shapes:

He understood that form means to die.

And this, his final work, is a coin

With both sides bare. He made in stone,

Of this great room, the arrow and the bow.

(Translated by Hoyt Rogers)

translations