Medusa

I went to work on casting Medusa, the woman twisted in a heap at the feet of Perseus.
— Benvenuto Cellini
First, the filigree work.
In two weeks a wax model
swaggers above his hands.
The Duke slavers.
Next the noisy opera
of money, mess, intrigue,
till the casting is in train —
up from his sick bed
to meld invincible Perseus
who'll pin Medusa down,
hold her severed head aloft,
to point the lesson:
better her topped,
and squashed by bronze,
than him and his likes
stared into stone …
So sentient his hands,
he'd worked on as air
changed from quicksilver
to treacle, coiling that
tensile root system as if
his fingertips had eyes,
and he needed no company
in all the world
but the deft blade
of his whistling.