The Lame God

On Recognizing Saints

[17] On reCOGniZinG SAintS As if to find new icons for her life or as if — piece by piece — to dismantle mine she scans our purchases too consciously. Flips through a magazine i’m embarrassed to be buying. Studies its regimen for shapely thighs; asks me — because she’s heard — if drinking wine is good for nursing. the shift from idle chit-chat to appeal. Camille, her name tag says. Camille of olive skin and violet nails with long metallic tips, who flashes her lover’s sucking marks like her stigmata. Camille who isn’t showing yet — but like Crivelli’s virgin martyr, Catherine, peers sidelong at me and leans decoratively against her register as Catherine did against her studded wheel. So clearly Catherine that i want to look away — or kneel. And yet, Crivelli would have framed her differently: a martyr tucked away with other martyrs in a predella of muted colors, quiet suffering. none of this heart-to-heart — this girlfriend talk that brings to mind a string of small petitions and makes me say my part. I range O’er rocks, through echoing groves. . . . As if my madness could find healing thus, Or that god soften at a mortal’s grief! —Virgil, Eclogue X ...