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The worm in the apple gnaws the fruit away,
and the dressed fowl the men have devoured
by the time Caravaggio remembers the inn-keeper
and his creased wife, the finer linens
and the pitcher as detailed as the Gospel of Luke,
and the ridiculously large ears of Cleopas.
What fierce blaze gets fired and glazed
within the tender-hearted as a stranger paints
the air with his midrash of pigment and time?
What light layers enough shadow over years?
I am inventing this last part; the rest you could have
read or been shown on your own:
Caravaggio once punched a drunk in the head
and saw Jesus as the man's flesh dented
beneath his fist like a warm loaf. For five years,
the stranger rose again and again in Caravaggio's eye.
—David Wright, assistant visiting professor of English at Wheaton College, is the author of A Liturgy for Stones (Cascadia).
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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