THE HUNT (The Prado)

Lucas Cranach, you have painted yourself

Into a corner where you look out across

The centuries, trying to say something

You have not said in your painting

The Hunt, a tapestry of hounds and deer,

Crossbows and hunters, surmounted

By a medieval pink and white castle

Where no one ever lived. Your self-

Portrait in this corner says: my heart

Was with the stags that fell bloody

By the river. I mourned the fallow does.