Botticelli

”He’s spirit, alchemist or sorcerer”,
they said wickedly whispering poison
mumbling, their faces distorted by envy,
frowning, gossiping spreading slander.
The bigots’ rumor traveled in plazas
echoing in the crowd’s ear:
”He cannot be mortal”.
But how the Florentines praised him,
that sacred morning when he glimpsed
the perpetual ingenue on the white canvas
with porcelain skin
and almond-shaped eyes.
Towards dusk he sensed
that the Tyrrhenian sea was green,
he had a few final touches left
when it seemed to him that she had been gazing at it
for a moment, with lightning speed
above the rooftops and the Tuscany hills,
or maybe it was just him,
then the color impossible to mold by his confreres
suddenly enlightened her gaze
under which dumbfounded centaurs
remained stone-still.
Beyond time she kept haunting him
under thousands of faces,
he knew that she had stolen
immortality for him
and he began to fear.
He sent his soul far away
defeated by Savonarola,
but she would come in his dreams
night after night,
foretelling the moment
of their reunion,
in one mother-of-pearl morning
on the green of the sea
impossible to render
by human hand,
where the sun
never sets.