Poem of the Week: Death Comes to Caravaggio

Was it fever, or was it lead poisoning,
or was it a vengeful murder? It was not.
It was not exposure, nor was it illness
undefinable. It was not a thousand paper cuts.

It was quieter than he had imagined—
the light fell from the window, as though a brush
had drawn away white paint from a body.
It was not a beheading, it was not righteous.

It was not over a debt or over a hole in the earth.
It was painful, and the pain became a horse bolting,
throwing its rider in the light, its bit clacking
in its teeth, while an invisible thrush sang

in a tree. On his canvases he made robes red
because he loved red. It was not an argument;
it was not an apology. It was not quick;
it was not removed from time. Death comes

to Caravaggio; it comes to him like a dream.
Death arrives and keeps arriving, like change,
like uneven nights. That’s it. It is arrival
like night: darkness first, then sound.

Colin Criss has had poems published in Ploughshares, Cyphers, the Harvard Advocate, and in many other journals. He teaches poetry at Washington State University.