San Biagio, at Montepulciano

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew The ways you promise what you lack; And that your bodies, like your souls, Always slip from our grasping hands. Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint, As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's Architects still offer more than ours, Who only build a scaffolding of dreams. He dreamed, all the same; but on that day, He gave a better use to beauty's shapes: He understood that form means to die. And this, his final work, is a coin With both sides bare. He made in stone, Of this great room, the arrow and the bow.