Fault

Anatomical Theater

72 Anatomical Theater Bologna, Padova The book of the human body . . . cannot lie. —Vesalius 1. Padova, 1543 Here, Love, Vesalius memorized lines Parting skin and fat; laid muscle open, Fibers feathering, pulling to bone; he steadied Scalpel under the eyes of students elbowing For the clearest view. That body was done With all stages but the last performance Climaxing, like all love stories, in death. The theater in walnut not yet built. It was winter. Outside. Wind on his neck. He worked fast, bare hands conducting With measured delicacy, though he loved Only the body. He played, His back to the house, teasing notes From organ and heartstring. Nothing personal, Just the ache of joints, settled blood— No formaldehyde, nothing to keep flesh Firm but the cold. He opened it all himself, Testing blade against a heart gone 73 Before the public hanging, the trial—slipped To hatred, wantonness, mere hunger’s sleight Of hand, the body’s dire urgencies Now also gone. Exeunt. Spirit Whipped. Cast loose. Delivered by what I can’t tell from here. Looking close, Vesalius sees the heart, its separate chambers. Executes that cut. Given to Abandon, the lost beat, he forgets His audience, what he knows. Won’t admit For years he has imagined the body, new. 2. Bologna Then, how bodies are translated, Once they decompose, back into art. A renaissance: the theatre so figured Either side of the lectern, carved bodies Flayed but still lively, leg’s jaunty cock Holding up the surgeon, holding forth, All in wood: loving cuts Of muscle, veins’ traceries so precise Each becomes a model of creation 74 Waiting to be electrified by touch. The bodies of physicians laid in rows Regular as blank verse. It took eight years After the bombs fell to put it right, I think. The caretaker recites in fast Italian Translated by gesture, the sweeping arm’s Emotion carrying understanding The way it does in opera, swelling the heart With certain knowledge. I still don’t know: Who is the woman in chains? Absent a body They’d use a manikin, modeled for real, Eyes wide open. A gentle look For one laid like a box: breast and stomach Lifting lidlike to muscle, ribs to viscera. The organs’ jewel compartments. Pudenda Coyly draped. Head thrown back to hair Flown in ivory, ivory throat exposed. 3. Padova, 1594 The first indoor performance was Fabrizios’. Windows plastered over. Musicians sawing A torchlight serenade. For all that, Still cold. The body in the kitchen Undergoing stripping, plucking, as 75 Any woman’s for wedding, or debut. Prepared, The students lean over rails, tiers So steep there are no chairs: just their breath Raising hairs on each other’s necks As they crane over to watch the blade Pierce the solar plexus. The table set. A passed flask. A joke under the breath. They’re just kids. That dead weight still Rising to resist. In the wings, A pig’s corpse understudies the human In case the church arrives. A trapdoor to the river. Lookout’s cue: Curtains. The body falls Away. Slap and freeze, As if the corpse could feel one jot of what We feel for it, vivified. The truth: I don’t even know what you feel, Though your heart sparks mine, and your brain’s Awash in electricity—though I know Without looking where you stand In any crowded room. Those old painters Were right: the halo’s a charge We all carry, invisible 76 Gift of the body to air. It’s almost easier, Imagining the dead. I keep forgetting This is a love poem: didn’t we Reinvent the heart? The push-me pull-you Of its muscled art. For you, I’d shed Any flesh, throw off sparks and flotsam To star the universe, which wastes nothing, In which every thing is wasted. 4. Operations Ten-thousand years BC. A manual drill— Skull and brain are nerveless, and desperate measures May call forth more time: its measured breath Against the breathless dark. A comfort Just to do something. One skull twice Trepanned. The first hole healed over Before it failed. The body is no poem. Not a painting brushed down in layers The historian x-rays, meticulous Lover of image and its ghosts— Eclipse means abandonment— That figure painted over in the corner 77 Coming...