ON A COPY OF A RAPHAEL IN THE SACRED HEART BASILICA, TIMARU

Above the portal of the southern transept

facing the altar of the star-crowned Queen of Heaven

in a gilt, nineteenth-century approximation

of the baroque, is a very good copy of Raphael’s

Madonna della seggiola, the Madonna of the Chair.

She looks down at the old women saying their Rosary

as if reflected in a circular black eye,

self-assured in her eternal tranquillity, though perhaps

the apple of her cheek is more Bouguereau wax fruit

than the son of sunburnt Urbino’s brush would permit.

She smiles, enigmatic, beatific, her arm

a logarithmic spiral, a snail shell vortex protecting

the plump-limbed Christ-Child more her’s

than God’s, while John the Baptist

gazes on his aunt and cousin in rapture.

Inwardly as a child I used to tremble,

gazing on that great dark eye

instead of the chanting priest, half-stoned

on frankincense, seized by Raphael’s cunning whirlpool

second-hand, unconsciously fearing it might snap shut

with the crash of the Endgame of good and evil.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I became

an art historian.