Remembering Michelangelo's David

By these his hands the vineyards spring ripeness

and the beasts rise again in meadows spilled with blood

to move off, desiring death once more

till another time.

The women still observe him with impassive faces

and ungirdle themselves for the boy.

Old women in the delight of terror.

His eyes...

And dead young girls chafe against the cold;

wake, to match the marble and to breed

a race of beauty not for death.

How men regard him secret in their philistine awe

as he stands above in anxious

and terrible expectancy . . . is it. . . of kingdoms

and years of men.

He arrives always at the perfect marble word.

The entire stone slays our preposterous giant

so when it roars why should he care,

this boy who holds the covenant.