David Kirby
Beautiful Hell
Fat babies climb toward the mother of God
in this fresco on the wall of Santa Maria della
Scala, the hospital in Siena founded in 832 as
a place where the orphaned children of the plague dead
could go for milk, clothing, education, a place
in the world, for taking care of your poor is not
merely good morals but good government, thought
the Sienese, who knew that boys left to grow up
on the street become violent criminals and girls
prostitutes, though none of this means a thing
to the fatties in the fresco, their chubby bottoms
quivering with glee the closer they get to
the Virgin’s outstretched arms. If only it were
that easy. Our own mommies die, and our dads,
too: if only we could find the ladder
that leads from our world to theirs. What
do we know of death other than what Ross
says as he describes Macbeth’s dark deeds
to Macduff, “Your castle is surprised;
your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd,”
and Macduff can’t believe it. “My children too?”
he asks, and Ross says “Wife, children, servants,
all,” and Macduff says, “My wife kill'd too?”
and Ross says, “I have said,” but Macduff still
can’t believe it and says yet again, “All my pretty ones?
Did you say all?” But this time Ross is silent.
If we’re lucky, we’ll see them go, our pretty ones;
we’ll listen as they tell the story of the time we all went
on that picnic, then see them fall asleep,
their heads on our arms as though dreaming. In wartime Florence,
local fascists storm the synagogue and scar
the door to the Ark with their bayonets and then,
when they can’t get in, go off to get drunk,
though when the more efficient Germans
arrive, they round up the old folks first thing
and send them away to die, and the Piazza della
Repubblica, the people’s square, becomes the holding
pen for the remaining Jews who are prodded up
loading ramps and onto trucks that begin their journey
to Auschwitz, Belsen-Bergen, Therezienstadt.
And you’re thinking, Wait, this isn’t right,
it shouldn’t be this way, and then you think,
I can fix this, because how are you going
to look at it except as a film run backwards,
the unseen atoms turning to smoke which disappears
down chimneys and hardens to bone clothed
with flesh, then suits, dresses, hats, gloves, the trains
rolling backward to Florence, Siena, Prato,
the passengers backing down their streets,
up their stairs, unpacking their suitcases, sitting
in the chairs they expect to sit in forever with a glass
of vin santo, a cup of tea before the pounding
on the door, the snarling of the dogs, the cries
of men no better than animals themselves, their voices
howling words you’d think no one could say
except in nightmares they’d awake
from shaking with horror, yet here they are, mouthing
the unutterable to your husband or wife, your family,
as though they were telling a shopkeeper
to bring some salt, a jar of oil, a loaf of bread,
and be quick about it, time is money, you know,
we don’t have much time. How will you
see death except as the pictures that haven’t been painted yet,
the movies that haven’t been made? In the Sienese
fresco, the babies are going back down the ladder
followed by their moms and dads, good women
and men with whole flesh, smooth skin, putting one
foot down, then another, finding a place
to spread a cloth, to make, not a heaven in this beautiful hell
of an earth but a place so like heaven that you can’t tell
the difference—look, someone is saying,
here is a cup of milk for you, some bread, some jam, a peach.