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 SAINT FRANCIS by EL GRECO |
By PAUL HERTELENDY
of TheColumnists.com
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Free-thinkers never
found in church
Will stand among procession pilgrims
Following Francis of Assisi.
Cradling in his slender elongated hands
A skull grasped as a symbol of mortality,
He’s thus depicted by a painter of the renaissance
Who viewed him as macabre.
Yet no one symbolized vitality in life
Like Francis, penitential monk of murky background.
A naturalist
with unmatched gifts to preach to birds,
Inspiring hedonistic citizenry to live more humbly,
Ultimate ascetic giving succor to the ragtag masses.
Francis launched the paths so radical
To serving fellow mendicants
Within the fleeting span and space we occupy on earth,
Where in the end we merely leave behind
Remembered love, a tattered memoir,
A legacy of deeds,
And scattered skulls.
---El Greco’s “St. Francis,”
Ottawa’s National Gallery
©2012 by Paul Hertelendy. This column first posted Feb. 13, 2012.
Paul Hertelendy is critic and webmaster for the arts-review web site www.artssf.com, and is also the Piedmont (CA) Centennial poet laureate. To visit his website, click here: PAUL
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