has come to us to stay.
She’s been here since Assissi’s prince
commissioned her one day
and the narrow-streeted painters
clambered up rock and rail
to hang the curved and dark, half-starved
full profile on a nail.
Lisa Giacometti
knows not her narrowness
because it comes from years when flames
were ordinary dress.
She does not know she’s virgin,
she does not know she’s saint,
but when she walks the present stalks
the past in straits of paint.