Leonardo was a most energetic man,
They say he talked incessantly with his drawings and his hands,
With notebooks written backwards, so no one would steal his plans for ships that sail beneath the sea and nonsense such as that.
He knew a man named Machiavelli; they were most unlikely friends,
The madman, artist, dreamer and the calculating prince,
Opposites attract, they say – maybe that was it,
Or perhaps it’s just that evil is drawn to innocence.
Sad smile of the Mona Lisa must have haunted him for years,
Now museum guards surround it like a shrine,
And demoniacs go after it with knives from time to time.
In Europe’s mid-life crisis pf bloody popes and kings,
Leonardo dreamed of birds in flight, made sketches of their wings,
Like God’s own graffiti on a little chapel wall,
He left the greatest painting – “The Last Supper” it is called.
Leonardo was ahead of his time by centuries,
But always short of cash; he rarely finished anything,
He was a puzzle to his enemies, a problem for his friends,
And it’s the wild card of history that men like him exist.
Sad smile on the Mona Lisa must have haunted him for years,
Now museum guards surround it like a shrine,
And demoniacs go after it with knives from time to time.
