“Durer’s ‘Saint Jerome in His Study'” by Chloe Martinez (poetry, ’09)

An excerpt from “Durer’s ‘Saint Jerome in His Study'” by Chloe Martinez (poetry, ’09), published at The American Journal of Poetry:

Durer’s “Saint Jerome in His Study”

from the 1514 engraving, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translator hunched, haloed, slant

of light, bottleglass windows lining

the casements with little sun-targets

and a skull beneath them, and Christ

tiny on his desktop cross, and along

the back wall, each thing in its place:

scissors, sunhat, time in the hourglass,

rosary on a hook, and one enormous

gourd suspended on a rope from the ceiling,

calligraphy of drying vines. The lion and dog

repose in the foreground. The trestles

of his worktable: etched in all their specific

solidity, their shadows at rest on the floor.

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