Where line and time and space and distance meet

A Perspective of Mantegna
by Stuart Henson

The sword swings at the soldier's hip and on
his knees the informer begs forgiveness
of the martyr, who needs must stop and bless
the man who broke a trust and brought him down
this road that leads in only one direction.
The crowd presses. They too must bear witness.
Acts they have seen before: the traitor's kiss
absolved on the way to the execution.

They all rest in the frame of the present.
Beyond the city gate, the tenement
whose windows give on the same unbending street:
betrayer and betrayed on one descent
that draws them in towards a vanishing point
where line and time and space and distance meet.