Expulsion from Paradise, 1426-27

Masaccio (Italy, 1401-1428)

Fresco - 208 cm x 88 cm
Brancacci Chapel

Santa Maria Novella, Florence

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TO MASACCIO
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- - - - - - - -- - - . - -You painted
them as though you too were dispossessed.
You must have seen that place, ringing with birds,
stems growing and sunlight shaking the leaves.
You had to see it once the way it was.
Until, unsure of His own faithfulness,
He began to test the only faithful.
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And where it ended, you began. For them.
I watch that naked man become himself,
and Eve, all bone again, woman and pain,
move slowly, human, into their private fear.
Out of the landscape of her mouth I hear
the cry, more terrible than any, being first.
She can't forgive her breasts. He hides his eyes
as a child, blindfolded in a game, still
hides from invisible angels, flaming swords.
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Here on a wall in Florence, Maso, dead
at twenty-six, you knew what they knew:
the shape of every wilderness, so many
gardens gone, the animals all named,
the gates guarded. Each of us asking
where is there left to go?
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Shirley Kaufman (American)
The Floor Keeps Turning
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970, Pittsburgh, Pa
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