Ecstasy of Saint Teresa: Bernini's Glorious Statue and a Poem it Inspired

On this, the last official day of spring break (weekends don't count), I thought I'd share a poem inspired by a piece of art that has fascinated me ever since I encountered it in Art History 101.  A couple of years ago, I tracked the sculpture down to its home, Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, and everything that was mind boggling about it in photographs is even more so in person--the body language, the facial expressions, and especially the various textures of cloth, cloud, wing, and flesh.

So I wrote this poem: 

St. Theresa in Ecstasy

after Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini

The angel, when he comes at last

in a trumpet blast of light

glistens like a newborn, smooth

of cheek and chest, his slender waist

cinched in wind-washed gauze.  She’d willed

this visit, prayed for days, refusing

sleep and food.  Now he appears

beside her, naked arm drawn back.

His fingertips caress a spear,

point it at her heart; his smile

betrays amusement.  This could be

the moment just before his arrow

plunges through her breast--as if

to pierce my very entrails,

she would write--or it could be

the aftermath.  Her heavy vestments

lift and rustle; from their depths

she swoons, lips parted, body curling

upward toward that flame-tipped arrow,

that cauterizing point, and though

the whole tableau is stone, she vibrates

like a harp string as the hand

draws back.  One bare foot clings to earth

as, limp, she crests a wave of pain

surpassing sweetness, tasted once

and hungered after: Now the soul
is satisfied with nothing less.

This poem and others like it may be found in This Bed Our Bodies Shaped, my second poetry collection, published by Able Muse Press.