Baroque

  Borromini
(1599-1667)

Spirit and form; to every soul its shell;
Sounds their instruments—flute, double bass,
Trumpet, each instrument its plush-lined case,
The flesh its cribs. Death its Heaven and Hell.
Bernini, your lightest-fingered rival,
Built only on the human scale, filled Rome
With wooing, delicious airs; your dome,
Dizzying, serial-spiraled, was a skull
Sucked to the coffered contours of a mind
Breached by infinity. The Infinite!