Beneath St. Sebastian in Urbino
Through the gleam and shine of sunlight on oil,
the solitary arrow remains undefeated, stuck.
The archer’s quiver full, as if in threat and promise,
the planted shaft’s length establishes the single-point
perspective that vanishes within the tender center
of Sebastian’s twisted flesh, as though truth and beauty
were so simple, as though such ancient suffering
were so necessary, as though there were nothing
more to this legend of violence and faith. Look:
In the foreground a single boy turns his gaze to you.
We came into the cathedral to escape the heat,
our eyes reluctantly adjusting to the interior —
dim, the smell of cool stone and incense, the pews
empty save for one in which sat another like us
taking shelter, seeking respite, or whatever else
it was that led us three within these walls.
You took the cathedral in circuit, altar and chapels all,
the click of your heels marking your progress.
I failed to tell you — chose to, really — how thirty years
ago, when my grandmother lay dying in hospice,
my mother placed me in the care of a neighbor
who brought me here to pray beneath this painting
alongside the taciturn monks, their disquiet
urging me to wander where sense and silence
are thought to tarry. There, together, we would kneel,
as I found myself growing increasingly more afraid
of the body’s possibilities, its fragilities and defeated
wishes, not fully aware yet of its pleasures or wants —
Tracing the arrow’s fatal path, I recalled an afternoon
beside the East River at home, the runner’s bodies
taut and glistening, when reading the journals
of a poet in Paris, how I learned Sebastian’s story
did not end with him bound and arrow freckled
but only later, when revived and restored, he returned
to the emperor, mocked him, and was bludgeoned.
As we left the Duomo, I thought of his limp and lifeless
corpse, newly healed in vain, floating in the green
waters of the Tiber. Above us, the swallows darted
wildly against an unforgiving sun while inside,
surely, the painted boy’s gaze remained fixed.
David Grunner was born in Forest Hills, NY, and, for better or worse, still hasn’t left New York City. He is a poet who, from time to time, teaches university philosophy. For nearly a decade he taught high school literature; these days, he sells wine & whiskey. His poems have appeared in Sunday Mornings at the River, Pearl Press, and elsewhere. He is at work on his first full-length collection, The Simple Logic of Inheritance. He can be found on Instagram at @dwgrunner.