'Assisi' by Norman MacCaig

Assisi

 

 

 

     The dwarf with his hands on backwards

     sat, slumped like a half-filled sack

     on tiny twisted legs from which

     sawdust might run,

5    outside the three tiers of churches built

     in honour of St Francis, brother

     of the poor, talker with birds, over whom

     he had the advantage

     of not being dead yet.

 

10   A priest explained

     how clever it was of Giotto

     to make his frescoes tell stories

     that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness

     of God and the suffering

15   of His Son. I understood

     the explanation and

     the cleverness.

 

     A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,

     fluttered after him as he scattered

20   the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed

     the ruined temple outside, whose eyes

     wept pus, whose back was higher

     than his head, whose lopsided mouth

     said Grazie in a voice as sweet

25   as a child's when she speaks to her mother

     or a bird's when it spoke

     to St Francis.

 

Norman MacCaig