Lapis Lazuli
by Joseph Yarbrough
Title
Lapis Lazuli
Artist
Joseph Yarbrough
Medium
Photograph - Photographs
Description
Lapis Lazuli
We walked like loosed snakes
in a tin can tethered by our ears
to the guide leading with her
antenna topped in an orange bow
bobbing up and down many stairs of the
Museo Vaticani into the Chapel
then out down a hallway of of maps
past glorious window views of the garden clipped its depths, distances, purposes unknown.
Museo Vaticani is a palace of
unmovable feet in stone
incontinent muffled voices
living bodies injected vertically
into an ever moving flow
constant, erratic, unremitting
past tens of thousands
of stones, and coins, and books
and masks, and cloth, and weapons
and painting, and sculpture, and fragments
and dreams, and phantasms
of great beauty and horror
beyond comprehension
surely beyond remembering.
As if by a laser pointer
maybe a dozen objects
were illuminated by her voice red light
through our inevitable path
across thousands of years.
Inset in the floor protected
by felt rope was lapis lazuli
shuffled by millions each year
raising the dust of
millenniums to fall upon it
obscuring the treasured
so rare and costly a
pigment used to only grace
the robes of saints and angels.
Pulled from the earth for
5000 years in Afghanistan
then packed by men across
the earth to be traded
treasured and died for
as the pigment of
queens, kings, and potentates
begged for by their artists
shaped into the eyes
of the gods.
And here it is inset in the
floor of the Museo Vaticani
unable to stop and linger
hover over it
absorb the color into my eyes
pounded into pigment
mixed with oils and resins
the tail of the snake
pushes ahead
and inevitably I do bend
with regret.
Ave Maria, Florida
June 16, 2016
Roma Series
@2016 Lapis Lazuli — Joseph Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission
Uploaded
November 6th, 2016
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