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MIRACLE
As
we sizzle along the roads in Umbria, car-top glints
like
the gun-sights of alien intelligences, exhaust fumes
giving
us smoker’s catarrh, the valley expendable,
the
town ahead a promise of cold beer and plaques,
the
day is one of those days squirmed into mind
by
the long hauls of discomfort. Unless
a miracle should happen.
Unless
some bright dust arise and spirit us up
a
side-track through the burnt hills.
Look, weightless across the windscreen
turning,
a farmyard floats as we squeeze to a halt
not
to run down the naked babe that lies there.
Happily
it sprawls in silk, on cerulean silk
that
curls, a midnight glacier, from the shoulders
of
the kneeling, marble mother. And
there are five angels
with
Westminster Choir faces, playing lutes.
Three
farmhands lurk—great quantities of wrist.
One,
playing along, suffers a majestic robe,
sun-bleached
magenta, over dank overalls.
And
if we hold on longer, before they pass
out
of our unbelief as we drive through,
we
might gaze left, at the valley’s untouchable water
and
ornamental trees. And to
the right:
the
city’s a scale of tiles, streets, campanili.
But
we are much relieved we do not veer
into
the unbelievable on every tour.
Alan
Marshfield
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