Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Shrine

R . T. S M I T H Shrine Past the village the stream meanders and cuts stone slowly with a saint’s patience. And in fact, on a bend where the water skirts a stand of willows, the rocks open into darkness, a grotto where some peasant set a statue of St. Ambrose, and the farmers with their women, their afflicted children have come for decades to hang medals and holy cards, to light candles and pray toward the cave’s deeper chambers where the passage narrows and no man has ever been, but any visitor 116 ❚ The 1980s in summer can see the quick dart of workers and hear the multitude buzzing back in the shadows. Some imagine they can smell the honey, and water from the shallows is sweeter by far. Nearby flowers are abundant, and the rumor or superstition is, of course, that God, a dark Madonna or at least the Ghost occupies the hive. The 1980s ❚ 117 ...