The Americans

Passionflower

58 Passionflower 1. First vision: stamens, gold sometimes, more often blue, and the bloom that will become a parable if a large-bodied bee pollinates it, or a hermit bat, or a sword-billed hummingbird. Propagate, wings, and be blessed. 59 2. While monkeys howled around them, and a full view of the mountains watched them from behind, they peered through creepers until a single flower called, on fire above. High on its perfume, they believed it was the flower in St. Francis’s vision, with a vine that climbed the cross and fixed itself where nails had been driven through wood, and with their ships anchored in the harbor, and guns unbirding the sky, they named it Flower of the Five Wounds. 60 3. Pizarro’s horse ate the flower without considering what it meant, and it’s thought Pizarro himself crushed its petals and made perfume for his lover’s hair, and when the scent betrayed him he had no choice but to treat his sleeplessness by drinking its pulp: flash of armada, light from the fireflies’ range. 61 4. Beauty is in the eye: spit-pit, Judas-hole, which is also the spot where the fronds grow, covered by hairs that exude a sticky mud, the wild maracuja with bugs digested inside, the white poka on half-bred pathways, stamped by pig hooves, gorged. 62 5. Thank God it wasn’t the maculate iris, and not the rose, emblem of secrets carved into palace walls. They feasted on the fruit while the natives, wearing suns made of gold on their chests, watched them from the path below. Then, satisfied with the gift and agreeing it was a heavenly sign, the missionaries threw themselves with great zeal into converting the natives. They succeeded in a very short time. ...