Aide-mémoire of Renaissance
I remember you,
undying in the embers of late lives,
in redder centers of flames you thrive blue.
I remember you;
I view a pair of hands I knew, it rives
a photograph of you; you stand inside
the palace of Caserta, your spine dives
left to rest on a lion’s pelt, that glides
down your stone club. You manifest the eye
of a red vortex of light; human–eyed
and focused on life lights the aether ply.
Divine and human you conflate, the re-
naissance afflatus you are. You untie
old words and new;
they accrue to you as humankind writes,
“Gloria virtutem
post
fortia facta
coronat”.
You manifest a palimpsest.
I remember you,
I dream of you, my ever–teeming ken
and insight. In this dream I meet the best
that I can be, a demiurge even
for a submerged by the overtax pest,
the “wrond” or “weak” sex, the orphan hood. Out
of strong hands hopes and dreams of mine I wrest.
“Don’t you have anyone in this world orphan?
Are you all alone?”
No doubt I have you.
I choose to remember you.
The “Latin Hercules” is an ancient statue of Hercules, an enlarged reproduction of a now lost bronze sculpture created by Lysippos in the Fourth Century BC. The “Latin Hercules” was taken in 1788 to the Royal Palace of Caserta, where it can now be seen by the main stairway. Upon the statue-base an inscription in Latin is carved: “Gloria virtutem post fortia facta coronat”.
Massimo Listri, the Italian architectural photographer, captured in 1993 the light and revealed hidden details of the statue “Latin Hercules” in the Royal Palace of Caserta with his camera (the architectural photograph, “Reggia di Caserta III 1993”).
| Athena Melliar |
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