Someday soon I should begin the sculpture of myself.
How could I trust it to someone else?
I won’t be seated, despite the ease,
but contrapposto isn’t really how I stand,
and, although the moai on Easter Island
have bodies underground, I’m concerned
about the scale of their heads to hands.
I think it’s important that I’m not symbolic
in my rendering. Nothing abstract, no deformities.
Hellenistic would be my preference and I suppose it’s up to me,
though I can’t figure how to best carve my back given
the confusion caused by mirrors. Egyptian basalt
idols are encouraging in that they look new, the limestone
and marble weak against wind and rain and maybe
I need to be cut from living rock, too large to be carted off one day,
rolled on logs or strapped to a flatbed as spoil for some new empire.
I’ll need to be wearing garments representative of my rank;
a belt with chisels, tape measure, hammer, and a sword;
a shovel in one hand, the other extended and raised
in the delivery of a decree or warning.
How will I present my humility in such a grand work?
Perhaps it will have to be in the eyes, so difficult in stone
and at great height from its audience.
It might be best to bury it once it’s finished,
deep underground where it will be safe from archeologists
and weather, surround it with soft soil and antiquities
to baffle those involved in its inevitable unearthing
or, better, design it as a perfect sculpture deep in the rock
of a mountain, never cut the stone away, leave it
inside, the flecks in my blank eyes staring into granite,
people coming to see my mountain as a pyramid,
the rumor of the eighth wonder of the world invisible.
They’ll look for cracks, sealed caves, wondering, always,
how I got my sculpture inside. They’ll cut tunnels,
they’ll use sonar, they’ll waste themselves and go mad
with imagination. I’ll be in the mountain, my arm extended
and raised. I’ll have warned everyone about ambition,
but what I wrote will have different meaning later,
trust in scholars waning,
the people certain they need to see my statue to be sure.