La Fornarina - a poem by Chris Zachariou

la Fornarina - Painting by Raphael

I.

In the silence of a nearly finished day,
Margherita straddles all her years
of barbed wire fences and takes the painter
   to her bed.
At night she lies with Raffaello
—such beautiful things they do together—
it’s impossible to resist these pleasures.

II.

I live outside a dazzling city
in the crumbling quarter of dead poets
but I can never go back to
this dazzling city again.

It is hard to breathe the air;
the opera house is silent
and the soprano is hoarse and gruff.
She cowers behind the torn theatre curtains
stealing hymns from failed poets
who once betrayed the metre.

In a ruined church
the stale aroma of burnt-out candles
hangs heavy on the altar.
The dying bishop coughs the lesson
from a stilted script and the cantor
chants a bootleg rhyme.