BORROMINI’S DRAGON

   
                        Why do you dress me in Borromini’s robes?  A mere

                        Geometer of ziggurats, tromperie and mean conceits,

            Whose veined jasper envies my vaulting stone, methinks.

After knocking off Bramante, Rome’s old chrome dome,

I, Gianlorenzo Bernini, hammered up Heaven single-fisted,
but Borromini judged my baldachin twisted with elephantiasis.

Papal bull!  I’d plumbed bronze from the Pantheon’s pagan

Portico to cast the canopy for the Barberini named Maffeo.

Borromini went berserk, Barberini buzzed, I went for baroque.

Bragged Baldinucci:  What the Barbarians didn’t, Barberini did.

Borromini roasted me when cracks wracked St Peter’s basilica.

My bell-tower fell knelled, like mine own nomen.  Saint

Lawrence I’d torched on the gridiron, thrusting my own limb

Over fire to mirror the pain:  oh my tortured mien, my singed hams.

I am not Bellini’s bridegroom, no longer Borghese’s protégé.

Verily, Borromini’s brain-pan sourced the Fontana dei Quattro

Fiumi, but twas my fancy bore the four river figures and grotto,

Sected the travertine to base the obelisk and armadillo.

Did you regard the bearded Rio de la Plata, staring baldly

At Borromini’s Chiesa di Sant’ Agnese in Agone?

Arm aloft, alarmed lest Borromini’s apse collapsed.

Ha!  Sweet revenge for my bell-tower clanger!

So would you borrow a second-hand chisel from that meanie?

                        I mean, Borromini.  Let the bozzetto carve his own niche.

Huh, mocking in Minerva my jocular tusker humping an obelisk.

                        Elfin wink, piping trunk, over-hanging saddle panel.

Bear in mind, Borromini, con brio:  brain above brawn.

                                                                         Michael Small

                        January; June 29-July, 2002