Small Pencil Etudes

#17:  In the Renaissance

Imagine this:

There were no PCs in the Renaissance.

No Apples, iPods, Thinkpads, “cells.” All No,

for everything was touched by human hands,

the age all shaped by hands and since each hand

is hand unto itself, unique down to the very finger tips,

each object, made by hands, unique as well…

Oh such a Renaissance.

Think of the parchment, ink and paint, gold leaf,

books bound in leather, light from page to page.

The ceilings brought to life through stroke

on stroke, on living stroke on plaster wet,

applied there, here, then here, then there,

a little at a time to take the paint

day after day; the painter prone,

pain running up his arm, paint dripping down!

No pixilation, no,

no digital imagery,

no copiers,

no pageless books…

Not in the Renaissance!

There in that Renaissance

The world was all ascrawl;

the tone of flesh,

the beat of blood,

the sensual elegance of silk and velvet,

lightly brushed against the shining skin,

and then the cloth embroidered there for all to see,

embroidered gold and silver, yes, beneath that cut of cloth

that I is Me you see…

And so the rush, the lush, relentless, breathly, impudence

of sweet and livid Joy

at play along the light

on flesh and then on marble, then on bronze.

There in the Renaissance

Those wild men and their Davids were

The future, standing tall – oh such an innocence

it seems like arrogance, ablaze and beautiful, and all curtsey

In those bright days, Goliath was the past

And they in flesh and breath

a newly nurtured now and then beyond…

But here and now, our now, our brightly darkened now,

all things are strangely faux.

Faux paint. Faux light.

Faux myths these days appear

In pixels glowing green and blue and red…

In faux communities the darkness thrives.

Goliath stands there. In that shadow. There.

Just in the back of one another eye. 

That’s him. Awaiting. Waiting to return.

Where is our David like those Davids then

So once aglow, back then?

In three dimensions or in even two…

the light so all alive in two as well…

the breath alive in marble, bronze and flesh…

alive in actual flesh…

back in the Renaissance…

Allerdyce Devoux is a nighttime poet who writes with the tiny worn down stubs of pencils on wee little pieces of paper that are left to litter the desk come morning. Making poems out of them is not my job. If it happens, when it happens, so be it and more power to him. – HCT