Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna
Your hands brush marble, feel impelled
To touch where crisp cold tesserae
Compose a fine array
Of arches that once held
A gallery of courtiers with gifts they gave
A throne in mosaic palace down a long cool nave.
Now strung between the arches like a tapestry
Hang folds that robbed Theoderic of his majesty.
Yes, it was curtains for him and his court,
Walls cleansed of every sign
That Arian’s heresy was taught
Here. Now the floating drapery seems to swell
Like jaunty washing on a line
Where once the line of courtiers spanned arcades,
Except where three white columns tell
The legacy that history deceives
Below the capstones of acanthus leaves
That crown the columns where the accolades
Were laid. His palace, set above, still stands
Mosaic, but the shape his person made
A formless mass, betrayed
By history, but for those three trunkless hands
Once joyful, welcoming, now sadly raised
In permanent farewell to what the Trinity erased.
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Note: Mosaics of Theoderic the Great (454-526AD) and his court were removed as heretical from Sant’Apollinaire’s decorative mosaics by order of Justinian, except for three hands left on columns in the palace arcade.
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