by Elizabeth Bishop<\/p>\n
Thus should have been our travels:
\nserious, engravable.
\nThe Seven Wonders of the World are tired
\nand a touch familiar, but the other scenes,
\ninnumerable, though equally sad and still,
\nare foreign. Often the squatting Arab,
\nor group of Arabs, plotting, probably,
\nagainst our Christian empire,
\nwhile one apart, with outstretched arm and hand
\npoints to the Tomb, the Pit, the Sepulcher.
\nThe branches o fthe date-palms look like files.
\nThe cobbled courtyard, where the Well is dry,
\nis like a diagram, the brickwork conduits
\nare vast and obvious, the human figure
\nfar gone in history or theology,
\ngone with its camel or its faithful horse.
\nAlways the silence, the gesture, the specks of birds
\nsuspended on invisible threads above the Site,
\nor the smoke rising solemnly, pulled by threads.
\nGranted a page alone or a page made up
\nof several scenes arranged in cattycornered rectangles
\nor circles set on stippled gray,
\ngranted a grim lunette,
\ncaught in the toils of an initial letter,
\nwhen dwelt upon, they all resolve themselves.
\nThe eye drops, weighted, through the lines
\nthe burin made, the lines that move apart
\nlike ripples above sand,
\ndispersing storms, God’s spreading fingerprint,
\nand painfully, finally, that ignite
\nin watery prismatic white-and-blue.<\/p>\n
Entering the Narrows at St. Johns
\nthe touching bleat of goats reached to the ship.
\nWe glimpsed them, reddish, leaping up the cliffs
\namong the fog-soaked weeds and butter-and-eggs.
\nAnd at St. Peter’s the wind blew and the sun shone madly.
\nRapidly, purposefully, the Collegians marched in lines,
\ncrisscrossing the great square with black, like ants.
\nIn Mexico the dead man lay
\nin a blue arcade; the dead volcanoes
\nglistened like Easter lilies.
\nThe jukebox went on playing “Ay, Jalisco!”
\nAnd at Volubilis there were beautiful poppies
\nsplitting the mosaics; the fat old guide made eyes.
\nIn Dingle harbor a golden length of evening
\nthe rotting hulks held up their dripping plush.
\nThe Englishwoman poured tea, informing us
\nthat the Duchess was going to have a baby.
\nAnd in the brothels of Marrakesh
\nthe littel pockmarked prostitutes
\nbalanced their tea-trays on their heads
\nand did their belly-dances; flung themselves
\nnaked and giggling against our knees,
\nasking for cigarettes. It was somewhere near there
\nI saw what frightened me most of all:
\nA holy grave, not looking particularly holy,
\none of a group under a keyhole-arched stone baldaquin
\nopen to every wind from the pink desert.
\nAn open, gritty, marble trough, carved solid
\nwith exhortation, yellowed
\nas scattered cattle-teeth;
\nhalf-filled with dust, not even the dust
\nof the poor prophet paynim who once lay there.
\nIn a smart burnoose Khadour looked on amused.<\/p>\n
Everything only connected by “and” and “and.”
\nOpen the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges
\nof the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
\nOpen the heavy book. Why couldn’t we have seen
\nthis old Nativity while we were at it?
\n–the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light,
\nan undisturbed, unbreathing flame,
\ncolorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw,
\nand, lulled within, a family with pets,
\n–and looked and looked our infant sight away.<\/p>\n
–Read by Kathleen at St. Lydia’s on January<\/em>\u00a08<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Elizabeth Bishop Thus should have been our travels: serious, engravable. The Seven Wonders of the World are tired and a touch familiar, but the other scenes, innumerable, though equally sad and still, are foreign. Often the squatting Arab, or group of Arabs, plotting, probably, against our Christian empire, while one apart, with outstretched arm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1119,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}