Apart
(Piero della Francesca)
A shared domain, the instant absolute,
Piero’s Victory of Constantine over Maxentius –
dividing the scene, a horse stumbles
from mire at the mouth of a river.
An ear toward pursuit, the rider,
gripping the reins, stares beyond us –
his future. Below the eyes
of Constantine’s white horse,
a village upriver at the horizon,
a swan and her two cygnets,
their moment apart is reflected
across a tree’s shadow:
gradations on a sky-blue of still water –
the river having flooded its banks,
the flood from what must have been
rain coming down like arrows.
The rider’s isolate, blank terror
through layers of light,
his open gaze at the edge
of sorrow we recognize, despite the near
blindness in which we live,
and here a man, his sudden awareness:
duration is patience preserving
presence through the ongoing, the violence.
