ANGELICO’S CRUCIFIXION

Tempera and gold on wood, circa 1445

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue

Here is faith’s erotic life,

Prayer’s unfallen touch, whose brushstrokes hold

Strange virtues even now to halt

And hush our steps beneath the Cross of Love:

Magdalen staggers at the foot,

Her hair and dress a flame, her back to us;

In rapt obedience in her mantle’s

Quiet blue, Mary seems small for her fate;

By hours the painter would have prayed

Like Dominic, as if his knees were stone,

Low as the earth His blood does stain,

Adoring heaven’s patience without pride;

Knowing that truth becomes a book,

Augustine reads, his mother simply sees;

The Lord’s beloved disciple sways

As one whose heart for joy or sorrow broke;

Francis, Thomas, Elizabeth

Perfect the number of this hallowed guild,

Who light a place where loss is gold,

So bent by love we hesitate to breathe—

Or else might feel perversely pressed

To scatter those proud saints like little birds

And batter down those brutal boards

And glide away with head bowed like a priest.

— This poem appears in the December 8, 2014, print issue of National Review.