Drawing for The Libyan Sybil, 1511

Michelangelo

No Miracles Today

 

He sinks. Today he doesn’t walk on water.
He struggles, first to stand, and then to totter
forward, as if the cobblestones were waves.
He sinks again, and gravity behaves
as usual. No miracles today.

Unless the cobbles change their state of matter,
liquefying under each collapse.
It’s possible. Each time he stands, he’s wetter,
but sweat and blood account for that, perhaps.

He falls a third time. There! The telltale clatter
of wood on stone. One couldn’t ask for better
proof than that. The streets beneath him stay
as solid and as sealed as rock-hewn graves.
The stones cry out: No miracles today.