The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Surfacing by Emily Tuszynska

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Incarnate

            after Desiderio da Settignano’s marble tondo “Meeting of Christ 
            and John the Baptist as Youths”

Under Desiderio da Settignano’s tools, the two boys must have
pressed up and out as through a veil, a caul, the marble block

warmed by his polishing, as if stone were transmuting to skin,
mouths panting softly, opening, soft eyes opening in luminous

stone. Open. Open. That prayer of childbirth, a desperate
willed acceptance, choosing what can’t not be chosen: the body’s

dumb surrender. Be broken, torn; be opened, flayed; be naked,
shaking. Desiderio, what tore you open? Though your story’s lost,

these your stone children bear the sweet mark of sorrow,
and of the end you knew—John’s bearded head on a platter,

the gush of blood and water from Christ’s side,
and before the mystery of mysteries, the temple curtain

ripped in two. Oh, flesh. Wail, moan, be touched, be torn,
until we know the body to be nothing more than the wound

through which the spirit is pierced. Stay, stay, your chisel rang,
and fell silent. Almost six centuries later these two boys,

cut and hammered into existence, cannot stop themselves,
they must grasp each other. They are, yes, made flesh. Their hands

sink into John’s fleece tunic and they quiet themselves
to feel the heart repeating its one muffled note of astonishment.

How many times, Desiderio, did you put down your tools to touch
Christ’s cheek, here, where generations of living hands have rubbed

the sensuous marble smooth? Did you feel what Mary felt
as she touched Elizabeth—the stirring of a boy within the womb?

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