Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo, the cretic beauty of your namesake,
Let me diverge from my folksy wisdom, and sing
Upon this lute the song of your Sistine Chapel.
No, I shall not use my utterances which bring on songs'
Mystic echoes, to my rigid verse and primal
Muse of meters sung without their feet conforming to the
Standards of the ancient lores, spun upon papyrus cloth.

I watch and listen to the sage who says your art was dulled
By the washing of a thousand hands which stripped from
Them their shadow like the cross shall strip away our sin.
And, yet, it is the most precious sight my eyes had ever seen.
For by the sins of careless hands, a sin brought grace to me.
For wrong it was to strip the work its shadowed veil;
Yet not a thing more beautiful had my eyes ever prevailed.
For Christ, our sin, shall wash away, to scrub off our darkened shadow.
And by this washing, because we sinned, we shall be beauty's mallow.