<em>for Shimon Sandbank<\/em><\/p>\n
Walled in by the desert, he had no patience
\nfor the solitary rigours of monks in rags
\nand, notwithstanding the brushwork of pinched
\nflesh-tints (the wasting away and slag
\nof self-immolation) displayed on canvas and panel,
\nthe barometer of his affections drew him
\nelsewhere and turned him into a pupil
\nof Hebrew, “this language of hissing and grim
\naspirates”. But I see him as Antonello
\nda Messina – who brought to Venice the secrets
\nof oil glazing – saw him: in the airiness
\nof his study, where the play of light mellows
\nchapter and verse, propped on his desk,
\non which he trains his mind in muted bliss.
\n– He who’d pleaded, “Step out, I beg you, a little
\nfrom your body,” scrapes back his chair
\nand treads three steps down, while the peaceable
\nlion pads in the cloister with nowhere
\nto go, lost in a perspective that fools the eye
\nand bids the heart to linger in the domed
\nmansion, at noon-tide, amid the cries
\nof swifts, glimpsed through the high windows,
\nseeding the air. To live and move
\nunder the veritable Bethlehem skies, and thrust
\nthe hand into the flame translating the Good
\nBook for everyman, and day by day to prove
\nhow words might heave and break the crust,
\nthe hard Judean soil, and serve as food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
<em>for Shimon Sandbank<\/em> Walled in by the desert, he had no patience for the solitary rigours of monks in rags and, notwithstanding the brushwork of pinched flesh-tints (the wasting away and slag of self-immolation) displayed on canvas and panel, the barometer of his affections drew him elsewhere and turned him into a pupil of Hebrew, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}