The Old and the New Masters

The Lost World (1965)

About suffering, about adoration, the old mastersDisagree. When someone suffers, no one else eatsOr walks or opens the window—no one breathesAs the sufferers watch the sufferer.In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. IreneThe flame of one torch is the only light.All the eyes except the maidservant’s (she weepsAnd covers them with a cloth) are fixed on the shaftSet in his chest like a column; St. Irene’sHands are spread in the gesture of the Madonna,Revealing, accepting, what she does not understand.Her hands say: “Lo! Behold!”Beside her a monk’s hooded head is bowed, his handsAre put together in the work of mourning.It is as if they were still looking at the lancePiercing the side of Christ, nailed on his cross.The same nails pierce all their hands and feet, the sameThin blood, mixed with water, trickles from their sides.The taste of vinegar is on every tongueThat gasps, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”They watch, they are, the one thing in the world.

So, earlier, everything is pointedIn van der Goes’ Nativity, toward the nakedShining baby, like the needle of a compass.The different orders and sizes of the world:The angels like Little People, perched in the raftersOr hovering in mid-air like hummingbirds;The shepherds, so big and crude, so plainly adoring;The medium-sized donor, his little family,And their big patron saints; the Virgin who kneelsBefore her child in worship; the Magi out in the hillsWith their camels—they ask directions, and have pointed outBy a man kneeling, the true way; the oxAnd the donkey, two heads in the mangerSo much greater than a human head, who also adore;Even the offerings, a sheaf of wheat,A jar and a glass of flowers, are absolutely stillIn natural concentration, as they take their partIn the salvation of the natural world.The time of the world concentratesOn this one instant: far off in the rocksYou can see Mary and Joseph and their donkeyComing to Bethlehem; on the grassy hillsideWhere their flocks are grazing, the shepherds gesticulateIn wonder at the star; and so many hundredsOf years in the future, the donor, his wife,And their children are kneeling, looking: everythingThat was or will be in the world is fixedOn its small, helpless, human center.

After a while the masters show the crucifixionIn one corner of the canvas: the men come to seeWhat is important, see that it is not important.The new masters paint a subject as they please,And Veronese is prosecuted by the InquisitionFor the dogs playing at the feet of Christ,The earth is a planet among galaxies.Later Christ disappears, the dogs disappear: in abstractUnderstanding, without adoration, the last master putsColors on canvas, a picture of the universeIn which a bright spot somewhere in the cornerIs the small radioactive planet men called Earth.

The Lost World (1965)