Colón In Extremis


I

The artist sits back, brush in hand, to take

his progress in. Yes, yes . . . the Great

Discoverer arches in his twisted

bedclothes as he must have; sweat

jewels the fleshy, whiskered jaw, slicks

the tangled hair made thin by grim ambition.

Do the eyes, rolled back in anguish, catch

more than the lamplight’s soiled yellow glow?

The artist dips up a bit of pigment, daubs

at the inward corner of each eye—two ticks

of white. A magic touch! For suddenly

it feels as if Colón can see beyond the wall

on which his murdered Savior hangs,

beyond the Ocean Sea; it seems his vision’s

found (at last) the gold-paved streets, walls

and roofs of gold that hover, shimmer, breathe

their whorish promises—toward which Colón’s

whole body stretches, every muscle clenched,

each tendon taut . . . the succubine dream

wetting his mouth with its syphilitic kiss.

The artist smiles. It works. Especially

the way the hazy vista of Castile

outside the window seems to dwarf

Colón’s death-throes. The season’s Spring,

but the colors are impoverished—dusty blues,

bleached siennas, a greenishness suggesting

fields of stringy ryegrass, sullen reds.

One can almost hear the ill winds

keening through the clay-tiled belfry

of the Church of San Francisco (a spire

built of grays and browns, a shadowy slash,

a hint—no more, no less). The artist, deep

in hard thought, digs in his kinked beard,

pinches up a louse (fat with his own blood)

and crushes it on the edge of his palette:

another color he wants to work in.

II

She unglues one eye, then
     the other. Light
smears the cloud-tangled sky with a sheen
          like lanolined wool
     at shearing-time. She stretches, cattish,
slipping back the sheet
     so dawn can wash
the breast her last drunken lover slashed—
          the one he likes best
     (he’d spend an hour tonguing the scars
if she would let him.) There
     he is: turned
away, absorbed in colors, lines and shapes,
          shadows, dreams. Shouts
     bursting from the street don’t seem
to touch him, nor the woven
     fragrances
of bakers’ stalls, abattoirs, horse
          farts, the carcasses
     of pigeons crisping on spits—nor her
own sleep-thickened voice,
     it seems. She calls
again. He brandishes his brush, grunts
          good morning in that odd
     lilt. “You twitter,” the old
man (drunk as ever)
     told him once.
“I almost hear those fire-plumed island birds
          you want to paint. Do it,
     then. Annihilate your palette!”
El Viejo’s public likes
     his somber hues—
his purse is proof, although he never pays
          for drinks and thinks the putas
     should pay him (toward the end
of a night in the tavern he’ll roar,
     “I’m an artist!
I’ve got a big cock!”—then stagger off,
          dragging smoke and laughter
     out into the night.
El Picante there has brushed
     his rowdy old
wicked mentor up from canvas voids
          half a dozen times—
     the only times his eye has touched
a subject lovingly,
     she thinks. Look
at the harsh light his savage heart’s poured out
          over the dying man—
     Colón, he says, who hauled his father’s
mother back to Spain
     from Paradise
in chains. She was, he claims, Taino (“A kind
          of monkey,” the old man joked
     once behind his hand; he lost
a tooth when El Picante
     smashed his mouth).
From her he got his skin—whiskey brown,
          kid-glove smooth, though bleached
     a bit by Spanish blood. Her own
blood has been diluted, too.
     So, at least,
her father thinks—he says it’s why she fled
          a good sheep-herding life . . .
     for what? A life spent on her back?
It’s not . . . I don’t, she’d tried
     to tell him, heart
turning to lead in her chest. (It was the day
          they laid her mother down
     in the shadow of Mount Perdido.) Still,
she likes the feel of it,
     her painter’s skin,
the taste of it—he tastes . . . exotic. Look
          at him, the long-boned arms,
     willowy wrists, the eyes that see
through, see into . . . when
     they see. She frowns
at his back and snatches the wooden goblet up
          from the bedside box (a crate
     stood on end), raps it to knock
loose the roaches (two
     drop and scatter
like fire-shot cinders), and splashes into it
          the dregs of tinto: warm
     and dark and sour as her love.

III

Hold the secondary figures back,

the old man says. The artist knows it: let

the context speak, the balance (or the lack

of it). And yet Colón’s two sons resist—

sly Diego, craven Fernando . . . they kneel

beside the bed and claw the sheets, groan

their ostentatious prayers. They almost wreck

the composition, almost break the heart

of their creator—they who in life created

him, they and their brutal ilk . . . the scum

who split Taino women with their cocks,

Taino heads with swords, who killed for sport

the brilliant island birds and porpoises

and island children too, who worked to death

so many slaves, clawing up their gold

from the butchered earth. Hold back? he thinks.

Would Bosch hold back? But you’re not Bosch, he hears

the old man croak, laugh sharp as a crow’s. Christ,

in Spain you’re barely a man. Get used to it!

The bastard’s gruffness springs from fear: the whores

gossip that his manhood’s hoodless, bald

whether soft or hard. Circumcised,

they whisper—meaning Jew (not that they care:

at least Jews pay; the Inquisition’s spies

pay with blows, with threats): the old man dreams

of sword hilts knocking at his door in the dead

of night, of being dragged off in chains.

He also covets El Picante’s Basque,

who poses nude for nothing more than meals,

a jug of wine, a laugh, a breathless roll

in the grass beside the Duero. And here she is,

a fragrant silence at his shoulder, wrapped

loosely in the sheet they tangled in

last night. “Look,” he tells her, points his chin.

She’s in the scene as well, as old Colón’s

second wife, Beátriz. Leaning close

as if to sniff the paint, she says, “I see.”

She’s not impressed. She’s been Athena, blithe

Aphrodite, nymphs and gypsy maids—

but here she’s older, grim about the mouth,

staring out a window with a look

of dim confusion. “What’s that in my hand?”

she says. “The will.” Colón, he tells her, left

Beátriz more than wealth—an insult,

an implication that she’d sold herself

while he was plying the Ocean Sea. “He left

her there to starve,” he says. She nods, then shrugs.

“Hunger and morals seldom mix.” He smiles.

“The old man says he’ll be a saint one day.”

“We live in crazy times,” she laughs and leans

against him. Always a shock—her candid warmth.

He slides his hand inside the sheet, dips

a finger into her gently as the tip

of a brush. “I need to get to work,” he says.

She lets the sheet fall, breathing, “So you do.”

IV

. . . and I burst in on them. No fault of my own! We’ve been acquainted some years, he’s learned a good deal about art at my knee. And yes, as you’ve so kindly pointed out, a bit about other sports as well. I admit it! Virtue’s not my strength. But God has granted me other talents. I’ve painted courtiers, grandees, conquistadors fresh from the New World and flush with riches. Even your Inquisitor has sat for me! So you see, you see how your summons has come at an opportune time. Yes, just yesterday I burst in upon them, and the two of them—artist and model—were engaged in a most . . . un-Catholic act. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is—his damned picture! A slander on the man that first carried Christ to the Indies. Colón in Extremis, he calls it. On the point of death he portrays him. Most piquantly, true—but truly to his disadvantage. To the disadvantage of all true Spaniards! And the colors . . . my colors . . . though not in service of their subject. Not for a patron’s pleasure, I mean . . . but for revenge. He bears great hatred for Colón. Believe me, I regret giving the poor ape such skills, not knowing how he’d misuse them. And truly, ’til I burst in on them, I’d never noticed how dusky his complexion is. His and his whore’s both. Therefore I’ve only just come to wonder, to suspect. Moorish blood? Or Jew? He calls himself Taino—not a Christian name, I think. But you’re the one who turns suspicion into proof. I trust your Superior will find my help of value. Muerto a los marranos! As for me, now I must rush off to Mass. Like my father before me, and his father before him. . . .

V

And when her screams subsided—
     her cries to saints,
to Jesus and the Virgin (proof that she,
          at least, was not a Jew
     in secret, no?) . . . the torturers
stood back to view their work—
     and he could see
from where he hung chained against the wall
          just how it might be done—
     how each lash of firelight,
each thread of blood, each tear,
     the ember glow
of kilns and searing iron instruments,
          the dog-like eagerness
     of those who worked the tongs, the cool
patience of their Master—
     how it all
might be rendered on a canvas, stroke
          by stroke . . . or better, laid
     down on weathered wood—a door
(let’s say), set in some
     public wall,
so people daily might pass and touch
          the scene, marveling,
     wondering what hand could shape
such a nightmare, what
     nameless soul—
but then his head sank down, his bruised eyes
          slowly blinking, breath
     caught like a fat chunk of mutton
in his throat . . . until
     his melting gaze
flowed down and touched the bloody worm,
          his severed phallus, thrown
     down on the straw—another color

he’ll need to work in . . .

__________________________
This poem first appeared in the 2005 issue of Divide.