Unfinished Captives

When I visited Florence, Italy for the first time I was overwhelmed by the unfinished slaves sculpted by Michelangelo at the Academia. Arranged in a line down a long hallway that led to the more famous statue of David, I remember thinking that they couldn't possibly have been more powerful had they been finished. The figures of men were literally straining at the stone, their muscles taut and polished and trapped not only by stone but time. I had read The Agony and the Ecstasy that summer and was a graduate of English and French literature with goofy stars in my eyes. I felt as if I had channeled Michelangelo, himself, through centuries when I walked down that hallway, luminous in bright Italian sun.

Today I opened up the Borzoi Reader poem of the day and read this beautiful little poem. It brought back the captives to me on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, 6000 miles away and many centuries later.

The Fragment of Statue 

How is it
The marble
Fragment
Looks whole.

Full of its power
The lips
And chin of
The feminine
Stone.

Not that the whole
Would not have
Power but

How does the fragment
Flower
At all.

-- Stan Rice