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MORRO DE S
- University of Arkansas Press
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MORRO DE SÃO PAULO Saltwater and hibiscus guide me toward waking and I wake. The last image of the dream comes back to me— Caravaggio’s Conversione di San Paolo hanging on the air above the sea. The image is so strong I have to remember where I am— an island off the mainland of Brazil. Not home. Not the cool-river north, cedar scent of home. I’ve slept too long—a meridian sunset burns through my window. Across the wooden floor, a canvas of sand. I wish I had that painting in my hands—that bright saint in a fit in the dust, the huge, looming horse, its long neck bent over Paul as he flails in ecstasy beneath a raised hoof. The old groomsman in the corner bows toward the horse, grasping the bridle in his one lit hand. In peripheral darkness, he faces the ground. How strange that he doesn’t see what Paul sees. I sip a glass of dark sugar rum, listening to the voices I no longer recognize churn like waves on the shore. —— The village contains a single road which I walk along seared by the light of restaurant patios— a pale amber glow over each patron’s face, each mouth an unstitched seam. The ocean sighs and sighs and sighs. Always a samba plays furiously somewhere. During daylight the island slept, but now it’s crowded, loud. A group of men yell a toast in Portuguese, crash their caipirinhas. Long-limbed women with toasted skin stand along storefronts, their stilettos sinking like roots into sand. Each wears hibiscus behind her ear. Their faces are lovely, but their eyes are hard—filled with loss— sand and sky and loss—sand and samba and the sound of ice clinking in rum. A man waves a bill beneath a woman’s face. She kisses him as she crushes [3.85.85.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:45 GMT) the bill between her breasts, turns away. I pass the same scene again and again with slight variations of plot, slightly different faces. Maybe the woman demands more for the kiss. Maybe the crowd of men becomes a crowd of young women. Between houses there are trees with mangos heavy as moons, and beneath the trees there are lovers. At least, I call them lovers. I don’t know what they call themselves. —— Now the village is a loose rope of lights along an indefinite shoreline— Past the border, a sea I know only by sound and the salt mist it exhales on my skin. Beyond the sea there is nothing. In darkness at the edges of the canvas an old groomsman stares at the dirt, tries to settle the startled horse as the radiant, fractured, epileptic saint flings his arms toward the sky. He was blind for three days before Ananias touched his eyes— And like as he possessed heaven, so he despised all earthly things; and like as iron that is laid in the fire is made all fire— I wonder if his bones, deep in the earth, would blaze if I touched his painted face. At the pier, I take the path that leads up a cliff. The jungle thickens to my left, and to my right a long drop down. As I climb, my view of the ocean widens—becomes less intimate, more lucid. The road plateaus at an empty church, its doors open, and along the pews and sills are candles flickering for no one. At the altar, a sermon of wind. —— Forget the painting. Let’s start, instead, with the vision. Begin with the flash of light— No, begin with the road opening and his face turning hot— electric aura gathering in the temporal lobe. His stomach deepens in his body and he senses [3.85.85.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:45 GMT) he’s seen all of this before, as if the steps of the horse go before the steps of the horse—stars suddenly filling his mouth—heat and voice in a glittering thunder reaching his ears before he could hear it. He sees his body falling before it falls, forgiven before he can ask forgiveness. I don’t suffer the saint’s affliction—the affliction of light. I walk in the upper canvas, staring at the ground, afraid of men so overthrown by their own minds as to believe they hear the voice of God. I don’t pretend to understand...