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Callaloo 23.3 (2000) 1052-1055



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The Ballad of San Isidro

Rhina P. Espaillat


In the village of San Isidro
they are gathered for a death.
A widow has called for her only son
and begs with her failing breath:
"I have promised you to God, my boy;
oppose me not in this.
Renounce the flesh and serve the cross
and earn my parting kiss."
Shaken body and soul, he hears
his mother's final prayer,
for body and soul and heart are bound
to a maiden's raven hair,
to a maiden's lips like a honeyed rose
and hands like an angel's nest,
and although he nods and bows his head
as his mother is laid to rest,
he longs to be on the silver cross
that lies on a budding breast.
A fortnight hence, by the river's edge,
her steps are swift and light.
"But where are my lover's eyes?" says she,
"for yours are not soft tonight."
"Farewell," says he, "my only dear,
for this is our final tryst,
and if you weep, you must weep alone,
for we must part unkissed." [End Page 1052]
She weeps, she weeps and calls after him,
but would she were alone,
for one has followed her from town,
whose heart is a burning stone,
Her only sister's husband,
the herdsman Nicanor,
who's watched her from under his sullen brows
these seven years and more.
Seven long years to her sister wed,
and his thoughts are grim and dark,
for one sister's grown like a fat gray toad
but one is the morning lark.
"Let me pass, my sister's husband,
for you know we are close kin!
I cannot love my sister's man
nor lie with you in sin."
"Your love may shut me out," says he,
"but your body will let me in."
He mounts her like a battlement,
he leaves no gate untried.
The owl drifts down and swoops to find
what prey it was that cried,
and lucky the skittering tiny mouse
that knows a place to hide.
Heaven that bends above them both
is shining pure and clear.
"I shall not pray again," says she;
"for nothing there can hear,
can see, can feel for mouse or maid
who cries aloud in fear."
"Sister, sister, draw me a bath,
for tonight I slipped and fell."
"What fall is this that has left your eyes
like the shaft of a poisoned well? [End Page 1053]
"Sister, sister, question me not,
for a serpent has frightened me."
"What serpent is this that has left more wounds
than the wounds of Calvary?"
"Sister, the fall was your husband's fall,
the serpent Nicanor."
"A curse on your face that has tempted my man
until he could bear no more;
Pray God you do not warm his seed
and banish him from our door."
He does not come for the harvest
who did such fearful sowing.
There are those who hint they know not what,
there are those who play at knowing.
But after the town wears out the tale
the seasons forget his going.
"And what shall become of my boy and me
since you've sent my man to wander?"
"We will walk and walk on the points of spears
until we've traveled yonder.
We will make our peace, as the poor must do,
for the poor have scanty choices,
and labor as one for our fatherless brood
till the choir forgets our voices,
till our feet forget the dancing-floor
and our breath how the world rejoices."
Her daughter is meek as a small gray dove;
she asks for nothing, ever.
But she's heard of the north, where dollars grow,
and her teachers call her clever.
"Farewell, farewell, my mother, my aunt,
my cousin who guides the plough,
I go where dollars grow on trees
to pull them down somehow."
"Farewell, dear child, we have watched for you,
you must watch for your own self now." [End Page 1054]
"Fear not, my mother, my aunt," she writes,
"I am far...

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