Tombeau

BY Randall Couch

As in Assisi a tremor
shakes down this heaven
from its painted vault,
blots Giotto, scars Cimabue

As on relics we steal
through rubble, heave beams
like bodies, cup plaster shards
in white-gloved fingers

As if we’d ask any task
but this now, to scan
for pigment traces
each shattered fragment

As though we knew how
to span again that ghost arch
with its inlaid thrones, how gilt gleams
in the tweezers, how breath is built

 

Biography

RANDALL COUCH edited and translated Madwomen: The Locas mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral (University of Chicago Press, 2008), which won Britain’s biennial Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation and was one of two finalists for the 2009 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Threepenny Review, Xconnect, and Best New Poets 2005. In 2000 and 2008, he was awarded fellowships in poetry by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is a regular panelist on the podcast series PoemTalk sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, PennSound, and Kelly Writers House. He teaches advanced poetry writing and poetics at Arcadia University and serves on the professional staff of the University of Pennsylvania. Trained as an art conservator, between 1980 and 1989 he held positions at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, U.T. Austin’s Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was educated at Trinity University and the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers.

 

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