The first of my umbrages is how utterly
       humdrum eternity seems.
There is, of course, the pomp of angels

       one might expect
in a papal commission. In the center
       space of golden aureoles

and just above an alabaster Christ (who
       looks more than a bit like
Raphael himself) displaying his nail-punched

       palms, reigns this very old,
unenthused Father-God figure as if crowned
       with a nimbused mortar board,

holding his globe in one hand while gesturing
       blessings with the other.
On the right side of the Jesus image sits Mary

       in devotion—apparently the only
woman worthy of note. Who can dissent from
       Moses, both Johns, the Baptist

and Revelator, martyred Peter and Paul
       being in paradise?
But Adam being there, after that bedlam

       of damnation which he and Eve
unleashed, is I suppose, where we have to allow
       for grace. Next, there’s the eerie cloud

of rosy-faced putti like chubby beasts
       of burden suspending
all the elect—not much enticement to give up

       a life of carousing and covetousness.
Were I given to iconography, rather than my reds
       and blues being used for

Renaissance robes, they’d be saved
       for the plumes of marvelous,
praising birds that fluttered near waterfalls,

       where beautiful horses
graze and gallop through summer days, and where
       resurrection would abound

in instantaneous geraniums, with golds scumbled
       over backlit rainbows.
Anyway, below Raphael’s vision of the sublime,

       a more animated, temporal fray
about transubstantiation takes place among mostly
       the usual suspects, such as Augustine,

Ambrose, and various popes, as well as Savonarola
       and stony Dante—presumably,
all of them to be tempered by Aristotle’s inclusion.

       One redeeming thing
is the ghost-white dove with wings spread
       in flight beneath Jesus’s feet

and who appears to be headed for Earth, swiftly
       toward their monstrance
to help settle this magnificent trivia being waged.

Raphael, Disputation of the Sacrament, fresco, 1509–1510. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.