This poem originally appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of The Antioch Review.
THE UNFINISHED SLAVE
by Bruce Bond
After Michelangelo
The man we see writhing in the marble,
what is he without the strength of all
we do not see. A slave, we are told,
though to what: the rock, the king, the world
that, cut or uncut, we can’t remember.
To be distinct, chiseled as a number
across a grave, that was his dream once.
If only he could shake the rough stone
from his back, instead of being one.
Or if he stood naked before the tomb
he was meant to guard, perhaps then
he would wear a god’s glass complexion.
As is, he is abstract, and so closer
to us, to the life that makes a future
the anticipated past, our heads half
buried, blind, disfigured by the stuff
to which we owe our restlessness, our art.
The hand that carves its figure in the slate
abandons it, thinking it will lie
beneath its work some day, beneath a sky
that refuses to commit, to lift.
It’s in there somewhere, whatever’s left
of those who drive a hammer into us.
With every blow, a little bloom of dust
flies. Time keeps its promise to itself.
***
Bruce Bond is the author of fifteen books including six forthcoming: Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press), For the Lost Cathedral (LSU Press), Black Anthem (Tampa Review Prize,University of Tampa Press), Gold Bee (Crab Orchard Open Competition Award, Southern Illinois Press), Sacrum (Four Way Books), and The Other Sky (Etruscan Press). Presently he is Regents Professor at University of North Texas.
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Reblogged this on sonnybohanan.com and commented:
“The Unfinished Slave,” a poem published in the Antioch Review, was written by Bruce Bond, my poetry professor at University of North Texas. Listen to the podcast of Bruce reading it at the link below.
I’m stunned at how much I’ve enjoyed my poetry workshop this semester, in large measure because of Bruce, whose mother, by the way, studied poetry under W.H. Auden in 1940 at Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania. Such an interesting fellow, and tremendously prolific — he’s the author of 15 books, including six that are coming out almost simultaneously right now.
I recently bought one, For the Lost Cathedral (LSU Press). I also want a copy of The Other Sky, a collaboration between Bruce and the amazing painter Aron Wiesenfeld. After the paintings were finished, Bruce wrote poems to accompany the images, which are stunning and disturbing. It’s an inspired collaboration between poet and visual artist.