BLACK SPOT

Our recent visit to Italy provided the opportunity to visit a range of museums and galleries and view a mind-boggling array of famous works of art by Old Masters such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and others.

LAST SUPPER

We drift slowly from gallery
to gallery. The paintings bleed
each into each; statuary
looms, massively, as we proceed.
Before a minor masterpiece,
we pause to linger, staring at
what seems merely a dab of grease
but is, instead, a small black cat.

A table laid with wine and food,
an old familiar story told:
the Christ, benevolent and good,
dines while his life is being sold.
The grim foreknowledge of His fate
shines from His eyes this fateful night
while elsewhere, Judas, reprobate,
counts thirty silver pieces, bright.

Beneath the table, black as jet,
with eyes like thorns and shoulders curved,
a cat, perhaps the painter’s pet,
squats like a demon, unobserved.