You are Michelangelo
and I know too, the benefit
of concealing marble dust in my hand,
so when a patron examines the truth
of David's nose,
I can climb the scaffold,
feign adjustments
and watch the dust fall.
When in Rome, I model
Bacchus, we drinking in ecstasy
as later, I am the green marble
in a chapel of Saint Peter's
holding across my knees
a dead son.
*
