Last Plaster

(Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)

Before heaven and hell soaked
into the wet plaster,
I saw the dead climbing
out of their bathtubs to be judged,
the saved reaching up
like a forest of golden spoons
through the cloud pudding.
How their facial muscles
must tire from so much smiling,
their arms ache from that eternal stretch
of praise.
Despite their just desserts, I believe
the good are starved

for attention. Hell's where all
we tourists congregate.
It's more down to earth here:
the fresco so brown and asquirm
with the naked it's as if Giotto
went digging in the garden and uncovered worms
or opened the curtains on an operating theater

before painkillers. I wince
in amazement. What did that man do to be hanged
by his genitals? Peering through her binoculars
a traveler asks, Why is that woman being flogged
by a moldy devil? Why is that man suspended
by his tongue?

Who are the wicked?

And is real hell this merciless
or is Giotto exposing Scrovegni justice,
a medieval muckraker sneaking into the prison,
then quickly painting his report?
As if brush and color could halt anything.

Besides, who'd believe something this monstrous
could happen
down the street from the chestnut orchard
and the flute maker's?

Aiming at the Germans
dug in deep in Padua
the Allies hit the church next door
but missed this chapel by mere meters.

Thus the young woman
with the long luxurious hair
and the shapely backside continues
to be flayed
and no one saves her.

Lynn Levin is the author of two collections of poems, Imaginarium (Loonfeather Press, 2005) and A Few Questions about Paradise (Loonfeather Press, 2000). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Boulevard, One Trick Pony, Tiferet, and Hunger Mountain. She teaches at Drexel University.

"Last Plaster" appears in Lynn Levin's collection of poems, Imaginarium (70 pages, $12.95, ISBN 0-926147-18-8). Imaginarium may be ordered directly from the publisher: Loonfeather Press, P. O. Box , 1212, Bemidji, MN 56619 or by e-mailing the publisher at mailto:brossi@paulbunyan.net