Christ risen by Rubens

Neither this by Peter Paul Rubens,

Nor any of the other paintings,

Could ever show the first thing of

The Resurrection of the Christ.

Nobody saw it happening.

The gardener, if there was any,

Might have descried something unusual

If he did not turn out to be

Jesus himself, whom Magdalene

Mistook for keeper of the garden.

Perhaps the flower buds outside the tomb

Could have unfolded in the night

To watch a shift in history,

And if I were investigating

I’d find each craning lily stunned

Like the eye stabbed by a sharp light.

Rubens interprets what the flowers,

Their gaze transfixed by what they saw,

Witnessed, all of which must have occurred

At the same time that the big rock

Flipped over and then rolled away

From the cave’s mouth–Rubens shows us

Jesus about to rise just as

A red-robed angel lifts the shroud

From him, while on the left two cherubs

Poise a looped crown upon his head.

How odd, this painting of the Resurrection,

Odd, because Jesus appears fleshy,

Athletic, with a worldly body,

Unlike the Christ in Rembrandt’s version,

Who is indistinct from the brightness,

Which might be closer to the truth–

The eyes of man as well as flowers

Are boggled by excessive light,

Which God’s unveiling ever is,

But this is Rubens after all,

Who painted such as the Three Graces,

In which he fetes the human form,

Which lies in a balance between

Shapeliness and deformity,

Whole and frail like a gossamer.

If anything, Christ made the body

More beautiful by his rising.

No other body was more tattered

Than his own, none other more ugly

Than the dead, but he rose to life

With the strength and beauty that Rubens

Could impart using his brush, more

In fact, infinitely much more.

Still for us Rubens is a start,

Because we cannot ask the lilies,

The irises and asphodels,

That chose to bloom on Easter morning.