Rodin's Thinker

With his chin fallen on his rough hand

the Thinker remembers he is flesh of the tomb:

mortal flesh naked to fate,

flesh that hates death and shivered at beauty.

And shivered in love, all of his burning spring;

and now in autumn sinks into truth and sadness.

The memento mori passes over his brow

all in sharp bronze, as night begins.

And in his anguish, his muscles tear, suffering.

The furrows of his flesh fill with terrors;

they tear like the autumn leaf, to the strong Master

who calls them to bronze… and there is no tree twisted

by the sun of the plain, nor lion with wounded side,

contorted as this man who thinks of death.


~Gabriela Mistral