His Eyes

After Carl Bloch’s “The Mocking of Christ”

are beyond the curve of a question mark,
comma, ampersand, tilde, or backslash.
Neither are they bending quotation marks
or circumflex tenting, drumroll dash
angling toward a full stop. There is, yes, pain
from vertical reeds, the greater-than whip,
but no closed expression after the strain
of yielding to underscore, being stripped
of letters, symbols, …