Pair of Bells
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Pair of Bells
Joanna and Valerio went up to the campanile of the stone-deaf castle.
From across the courtyard, one dented little bell with a skew clapper could be seen.
I hadn’t noticed the bell-pulls. But when Joanna yanked on hers, and Valerio took his turn,
I heard a pair of louder bells, deeper, surely bigger—though these and both my friends remained
entirely invisible. And the little bell, off-key and out of sync, hung on and swung—
a third wheel like myself, moved to celebrate a pair of bells. Things happen but are parables. [End Page 162]
Mary Jo Salter
Mary Jo Salter’s latest collection of poems, Nothing by Design, will be published by Knopf in 2013. She is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.
