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Sport 39: 2011
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
There used to be a wall-poster, ‘The Floor of the Sistine Chapel’, showing a floor covered in discarded lumps of gum, cigarette butts, screwed up napkins, scraps of food, etc. It depended on you knowing what the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looked like and, I suppose, what it meant. I got to the very place once, and joined the orderly queue. I looked down, just in case: the floor was immaculate. In a sense, my favourite poems show you the floor (as in the poster) and the ceiling at the very same time. Not one or the other, but both at once. I’vepage 70 always liked Carl Sandburg’s definition of the poem as a synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits—though it’s probably best, I want to add, if the synthesis is never quite achieved.