The Unfortunate End of Fra Fillipo Lippi

Santa Maria Assunta

In Spoleto two nuns are walking through the piazza

to the Cathedral

across terracotta tiles laid edge on

in a pattern that looks like the ribs of fish.

Their veils starch-crack in the breeze and

rosaries hang by their sides folded into brown robes

and catch the light on every other step.

They wear plain sandals and their toenails are yellowed and fungal

and they shade their eyes from the sun and stop to

look up at the gold mosaic

high up, exalting.

I sit against stone in the loggia and wait for afternoon opening;

for the locks to be drawn back,

for door to open quietly,

for the echo of footstep on tile,

for the interior cool.

I’ve come for the frescoes

for the life of the Virgin Mary

to see colour alive after centuries

and the soft humanity of faces painted into plaster.

He was buried here

in a tomb now empty,

his body stolen in darkness, bundled onto a cart,

horse stamping the tiled ground snorting white breath in chill night air

still heavy with rosemary

and driven down rutted tracks to who knows where

by the family of the girl he ruined,

his limbs pulled socket from ball,

bones splintered with hammers,

reburied somewhere in pieces

or just scattered for the foragers.

The nuns kneel and I take a photograph,

for posterity.