Ben, his voice emerging from his beatbox belt,

assures his comet tail of visitors that opulent

extravagance will always give simple piety

a run for its money. New age apostle, he’s

Speaking of the baroque, a style that clothes his city. –

Valetta, much photographed, much toured,

much bombed. Its spine, Republic Street [commemorates

Independence from us Brits] runs arrow straight

down to Saint Elmo’s Fort, now a war shrine

to survival. We cross it several times – past palaces,

churches, bars, museums, high windows where

still the ravages of war are yet to be repaired.

 

I leave Ben at the Co-cathedral of Saint John.

Who can fail to marvel at the transformation

Stone displays when every inch has been the subject

of a golden alchemy? It is religion’s trinket box.

And who cannot wonder at the wealth and power

of those who chose to stop our doubting mouths

with gold.  They also have another asset – Caravaggio,

who comes here to escape Roman justice

as a murderer – and faces death himself.

The Knights of Malta do not miss a trick.

He’s promoted, then protected by his rank.

They give him a wall of their cathedral to fill,

and the sentence of their martyred saint as theme.

 

Caravaggio invents a line of beauty sharp

with miracles, his oils flame in the darkness,

are sunlight following – it’s invisible presence

placed with unerring stagecraft to discover

humanity clothed in its bloody everyday.

There is the Baptist, whose pale and nearly  

severed head now cannot see the point at all.

Behind, the muscled, semi-naked executioner

gleams like a freshly risen Christ. One hand

grasps hair, the other holds a butcher’s knife

concealed behind his back. And there’s Salome,

ordinary girl in a peasant skirt, and cause of all,

whose petulant revenge holds out a salver

for the hacked-off head. Then the witnesses –

the determined jailer, bearded, stern, points a

finger of command; a woman old and shocked,

maybe the baptist’s mother summoned for

the punishment of grief; and two prisoners

seeing their own inevitable end. Tiny at the bottom,

only just untainted by the blood, the signature,

the only one he left in paint, of Michelangelo

de Caravaggio, He too destined for an early death,

not from an executioner but from disease or drains.

 

Brilliant and engaging, but remember, beyond

the expected sudden shock of drama, the epic

reimagined story, and the meretricious opulence

of the church which frames all this, there is the feel

of pointlessness. A greatness that has outlived,

is just the price of leaf, the value of the auction house.

 

Somewhere on Ben’s two-hour tour, he will have

reached the bar where Oliver Reed performed

his final moments, his body washed and cleansed

with lager, scotch and emptied thought. I try to

picture this death scene as Caravaggio might

have rendered it – The sunlight playing on

vacated glasses; the eyes just losing

sight and focus; the other drinkers open-

mouthed but ready to remember the roles they

played. This place another shrine where

legends grow to miracles, to capture laughing.