Carol Barbour: "Finding Without Looking"

A copy of Caravaggio’s Deposition
in the Chiesa Nuova
is too dark to see.
No lamp to feed coins into a box,
no lux ambulatory.
Mais or perché I can see it from memory.
Because the original is in the Vatican
and this dim reproductive image
is disappearing from sight.
This darkness is important. 
The copy is vestigial.

As I leave I notice a fresh marble
entablature, newly installed on the
adjacent wall. 
It reads: Cy Twombly (1928-2011)
The modern man of weathered scrawl
has claimed the space.
Darkness has censored the tenebrist
yet the white marble of Twombly’s tomb
glistens. 
On an angle, absorbed in an epic language,
comes the round bell sound of Twombly
from beyond the dark blackboard
of childhood. 
His circular neural system of elliptical alphabets
keeps time with the Roman tick
of antiquity.

Carol Barbour is a writer and visual artist based in Toronto. Her work has been published by Sein und Werden, The Ekphrastic Review, Transverse Journal, The Fiddlehead, The Toronto Quarterly, Resources for Feminist Research, and Matriart.  A graduate of the University of Toronto (MA) and the Ontario College of Art (AOCA), she is currently working on a series of painted altarpieces. A collection of poetry is forthcoming from Guernica Editions. http://carolbarbour.com