Epifania

 On watching the  interestingly-named cartoon 'Epifania' by  Michelangelo Buonarroti in The British Musuem. 

The holy family and other injuries

Tumbling flesh, the distant expression

Of caresses undressed, made wooden

-          Epifania.

Ah, seemed, the name of a woman

Identity frozen

Through twenty-six skins

Pulled back

Each an eyelid on the edge of sleep

-          The display  was almost intimate

It haunted the rivulet

Below the cheek.

I saw other

Women, men

Direct their gaze

As if disconcerted by the blur

Yet I only seemed to see the stir of faces

The pain in every

Human

Hair.