Poets on the Psalms by Lynn Domina

Author:Lynn Domina [Domina, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595340962
Publisher: Trinity University Press

WANT

Angie Estes

What if loss and desire

were not a split curtain

ever parted and joined

—Kathy Fagan, “To a Reader”

If I could go back to Florence but could return to only two places, I know what they’d be: Vivoli Gelateria, on Via Isola Stinche in Santa Croce, and, just a short walk to the north, the Cloister of San Marco on Piazza San Marco. Gelato—that intense frozen mixture of whole milk, eggs, sugar, and whatever’s ripe—soft and fast-melting like the silks still woven across the Arno at Antico Seitificio Fiorentino, which slide to the floor when you carry them.

this do in remembrance of me

In my own catechism, gelato means all want, all desire, all appetite—the desire to be filled yet never full—the names of the flavors themselves a litany that will almost suffice: arancia, ciliegia, uva, pompelmo, mandarino, mirtillo, pesca, limone, pistacchio, panna, albicocca, crema, fragoline, albicocca, panna.

to desire greatly; wish for

Even in the frescoes of Fra Angelico at San Marco, the hues of gelato appear, especially in the cells of the novices’ dormitory, small rooms designed specifically for contemplation: the blood orange and peach robes of Gabriel and Mary in the Annunciation of Cell 3; on the wall of Cell 1, the creamsicle duet of Mary and Christ in the Noli Me Tangere; the pistachio canvas of the world in Cell 7, where The Mocking of Christ takes place, Christ enthroned at the center on his persimmon-colored box. In the Presentation in the Temple, Simeon arrives in a mint and lemon gown, the Christ Child swathed in whipped cream in his arms. Our Tarocchio, pesca, panna e arancia, pistacchio, diaspora, menta, limone, panna. At Christ’s Transfiguration, the world turns out to be apricot, with an egg of whipped cream balanced at its center, and in the center of that egg is Christ, the letter T. Albicocca, panna, T.

to be without; lack

Yet despite their colors, the frescoes at San Marco—in accordance with their function as objects of spiritual contemplation—are all absence of want and desire. They enact, rather, the rituals—the tableaux vivants—of Christ’s life and loss. There is perhaps no depiction of desire and imminent loss more moving than the one embodied in the figures of Mary and the contrapposto Christ in Giotto’s Noli Me Tangere in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. In contrast to the palpable longing and tension of this fresco, however, Fra Angelico’s Noli Me Tangere at San Marco conveys all the drama of an eighteenth-century minuet.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

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