They tell me God will not abide

two men walking side by side.

Yet when He wanted Heaven drawn,

whose scaffold did He call upon?

 

Not Mark. Not John. No wedded hand

was summoned there at His command,

but Michelangelo, who made

men out of stone, and loved,

 

Tommaso.

 

Tommaso, written line by line,

his mortal him, his male divine,

till later hands, cleaner, more precise,

put skirts upon the pronouns’ thighs.

 

Four years beneath that painted sky,

with lime burning in his eye,

 

bent his back beneath the blue

and gave God’s Heaven flesh to do.

 

A shoulder. Thigh. A mouth. A knee.

The muscles of immortality.

 

And everywhere beneath the dome,

the naked body entered Rome.

 

Until God, reaching through the air,

found Adam naked, waiting there

 

a hand,

 

a hand,

 

a touch of blue

 

between the fingers

of the two.

 

The ceiling held. It holds there still.

No angel fell. I doubt one will.

 

So someone climb up there and tell

which brushstroke is the one from hell.

 

Which hand. Which thigh. Which patch of blue.

Which body God objects to.

 

Go on.

The ladder waits.

 

Above,

 

God still reaches

for the man

 

He loves.