“
Now reading
The Gardens of the Body
1535 in Paris, Vesalius
tells the truth about the body,
labels each glistening part.
Then, in Padua, sets it all down.
Fabrica, he called it, the wondrous
interweaving of nerve, bone and blood.
A garden to be named, each fruit
and flower patterned for itself
and the other.
I have watched
a surgeon reach into the plum-rich
heart as it pumped, a tiny blade
on his forefinger for the stoney valve,
and witnessed the ashen skin grow pink
as dawn. But also, in autopsy,
the skin laid back like lily petals,
vital centers drying. The pathologist
sat beside, eating a sandwich
and listening to the sweet sound
of his pulse.
I fear my body
crushed or stopped, this fabric scrim
which falls, the way a garden falls,
the way one fleshy pear falls, holding
within it an entire tree, the sucking
roots, the bridal bloom, and the light,
which in Vesalius glowed in a place
he never found.