Not Michelangelo's

Not Michelangelo’s
(to difficult sons with difficult fathers)
 
He always saw you misshapen—
an imperfect block from which he was tasked
with drawing out an approximation of the perfect human form.
 
You were porous marble, prone
to degradation
from the start—and so in his failure at the task
he could tell himself he’d failed at nothing.
 
His untrained hand he knew to be a prodigy,
which—given better marble—could have made a masterpiece.
 
He had suspected there were defects
even before you could be pulled from the quarry,
but the earth would not take you back.
 
He does not ask himself whose hand
made this statue—you
were not created in the image
of a sculptor wielding his lazy chisel.
 
No, it was the stone itself
who carved its face this way.

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Small edits made after posting, not sure if better: "He does not need to ask himself whose hand" >>> "He does not ask himself whose hand" & "made this statue here" >>> "made the statue"