Sculpture is the first of the arts because God was a Sculptor, said Michelangelo. But he was also the greatest lyric poet of the Renaissance who wrote poetry in his old age. For him love became religion and, one in love’s completeness, yearned for Christ’s miraculous power to feel complete. Here are a few poetic compositions of his picked up at random from The Complete Poems of Michelangelo translated by Joseph Tusiani. (1960)

Delight into the Heart Descends

 

So much delight into the heart descends

From him who steals both time and death away!

Love comforts me with respite every day,

Yet affliction grows and never ends.

Love, like a breath that vivifies the clay,

Rouses my spirits, stirs my sentiments,

And answers me: “Who does not love, he spends

All of his life as though interred he lay.”

 

Love is a concept of beauty, I guess,

Held by the mind or felt within the heart,

A friend of virtue and of gentleness.

…

Death Chase you, O Love,

 

Death chase you, O Love, from that same place

In which you triumphed once

Not only with your bow and with your darts,

But with your naked dance;

And with her ice she freezes

All your sweet fire, Love, so brief and low.

Maturity of heart heeds death, not you;

And if you still have wings,

With them, oh, fly as rapidly away

As when you reached me here!

In one’s last days, green age reminds of fear.

 

Just as a Silkworm…

 

Just as a silkworm with much selfless pain,

To make man happy, leaves its dear cocoon

And, dying, gives the hand a silken boon

And, dead, through such a gift, is born again;

So would that my skin, falling dead and vain,

Could be his living flesh! Oh how I soon

Would change, as does a snake beneath a stone,

My nature and my fate, through such a gain!

 

Would that I were—my hairy skin alone—

The skin that makes with its soft hairs a plate

O happy dress, around his handsome breast

All day! Were I two slippers he could own

And use as base to his majestic weight!

I would enjoy two snowy feet at least.

 

No Mortal Things my Eyes in yours have Found

 

No mortal things my eyes in yours have found

As in their beauty I enjoyed full peace,

But, in my soul where evil does displease,

Him whose love keeps His own resembled bound.

Were not my soul to share God’s destinies,

The outward form that here my glance stound

Would please me, because they are unsound,

To universal beauty my soul flees.

 

I mean, what dies on earth cannot at all

Quench the desire of an immortal heart,

Nor can man’s changing time make any claim

On eternity. Death to the soul and shame

Is our wild sense, not love; this makes, in part,

Our friendship perfect here: death makes it all.

 

My New Life shall be Vast and Manifold

 

So in love with the stone, in which it lies,

Is fire, that, soon drawn forth, with its quick blaze

It binds it, burns it, breaks it, and in new guise

It makes it live in some immortal place.

And that same stone, when baked, can brave and face

All seasons, and acquires a higher price,

Just like a soul that soars to blessed days

After the flames that cleanse while they chastise.

 

Thus, it is my fate that I soon must

Be dissolved by this fire that hides in me,

My new life shall be vast and manifold.

Therefore, if I am now but smoke and dust,

Cleansed by this flame, eternal shall I be:

No iron chisel carves me—one of gold

 

It is another Smith Makes me Create

 

If my rough hammer gives a human face

To this or that of all hard blocks that wait,

It is another smith makes me create,

Controlling each my motion, each my pace.

But that high hammer beyond stars and space

Makes self, and others, with each stroke, more great

And bright; and since the first must generate

All hammers, that gives life to all, always.

 

And since the most effective is that blow

Which falls from highest in the smithy, mine

Shall fall no more—my hammer having flown.

Now here am I, unskilled, and do not know

How to go on, unless the smith divine

Teaches me how, who am on earth alone.