Those women in Moses’ beard…

Michelangelo, those women in Moses’ beard,
those child-swollen women concealed in his hair?
You knew? And left them cascading there?
Penned in the prophet like cattle crammed
in a transport car, jammed tight with no air,
no room for facing themselves? Confined,
entombed in such staggering abundance
they cannot have dreamed what women are,
much less of death in that amazing stone.
Why, Buonarroti? What revenants of other worlds
wound sky into marble that you might do this?
Found eyes for your chisel to curl the waters
that flood his cheeks and chin, bent bones
that mothers and daughters might conform
to that torrent of tumbling fathergod hair,
sat this stern son in Sophia’s chair?
What was your fear? God’s eye from on high?
The eyes of men? Women know what was done.