wordsout by godfrey rust
Postcards from Florence  < 5 of 5



Angelico

The Deposition of Fra Angelico
is the painting I love. They pass  

Christ’s body down between them like a waterfall,
kindness in each expression—saints, apostles, martyrs,

women and Florentine merchants—united
in art as never in life, defying

time to keep them from this act
of corporate obedience. Might it not

as well have happened just like this—the Spirit’s
glow in these anachronistic faces, the bell

tolling over the cool cloister of San Marco
as this three-quarter-turned congregation stares out,

pardoning our failures, reborn in this unlikely sacrifice,
brilliant with hope against a Tuscan sky?


Last of five poems in the sequence Postcards from Florence.

© Godfrey Rust 1996, godfrey@wordsout.co.uk. See here for permissions.

.