A STILL LIFE BY JUAN SANCHEZ COTAN

Juan Sanchez Cotan the Spaniard
Puts a membrillo and a repollo
To be preserved in the larder window.
They hang from hidden hooks in the night sky,
Five objects in celestial order, 
Planets geometrically processing
Through the impenetrable infinite.
They are still there - preserved in a painting.
Myopically sublime and numinous,
He sees his God in the quotidian.
Across the Mediterranean sea
Is a parallel, disconnected life.
The great Galileo Galilei.
With telescope and hyperopia 
He too sees the planets in procession
In a heliotropic universe.
Still there - a new testament to reason.
In parallel - a monk; a heretic: 
Juan enters the contemplative life
To serve his purblind Church and his God.
Galileo enters the papal court
To be condemned by the Inquisition.
To guarded house arrest for his end years.
I would like to think he went home alone
And, contemplating Juan Sanchez Cotan,
And the ways of Man and the Universe,
He ate cetriolo with melone