Of plaster, papier-mâché, moulds

            Positive and negative – 

            It had become cliché to find 

            In every image my reflected gaze

            No matter how I turned my hand 

            Upon the clay

            And when I recognised in lovers too

            My signature, I packed my bags

            Travel, respite, foreign soil,

            Faces so uniquely strange

            Helped me to anonymity

            And in the church where Dante

            Set his sights on Beatrice,

            That dark and simple haven

            With its welcoming austerity and cool,

            I understood one might escape

            What was within to be enlightened by

            What lay without

            Exhilarated I prepared for my return

            And strolled once more along the Loggia dei Lanzi

            On the way to my pensione 

            Under Cellini’s famous bronze,

            A resident for centuries, I paused

            The beauty of Medusa’s face

            Was far more suited to have launched a thousand ships

            Than to have turned whoever looked on her to stone

            I studied it from every angle

            For a clue, a key, an answer, a solution –

            Even a hint that might explain

            Such a perversion of mythology

            And only as I puzzled could I see

            The greater mystery:

            Perseus’s features were the same, 

            The slayer and the slain were as alike as twins

            Contemplating difference and identity

            Was it the wine or coffee I had swilled

            And was I yet again imagining

            Or had Perseus just shown me 

            I achieved a victory over myself?