My Failure in Ekphrasis, or The Folly of Robert Frost, or Why I’m Banned from the Vatican

A poet cannot

make a magnum

opus. It’ll never

achieve the stars.

Two roads

diverged in a wood ?

No, trees won’t get it done,

and a path’s a dime a dozen.

Even if you walk it

with a pebble in your shoe.

Anyone can add. Taking away's

the ticket.

I’m with rock &

marble, sculpting’s the way to

fly. You chisel away the chaff,

leaving the world agape.

Michelangelo’s

Pietà—all I can imagine

are his hands, loosed from the

rest of his arms, detaining the

Divine without a quill. But perhaps

I’ve got it wrong: he inked

a thousand poems; the

arm begins at the wrist;

the artist—an atheist;

that it’s not of

Christ & Mother

but a slumber gone amok,

a man caught up in the throe

of a piercing dream; a woman

like a chair—

perhaps some ingѐnuo,

still as innocent as presumed,

refusing to take advantage

of the fortuitous situation,

the exposure of the flesh,

rocking him ever-gently

just like a Roman

amante would, humming

sleep bambino, sleep.

Andreas Gripp

October 3, 2025

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