Faithful See Virgin Mary in Office Window

In flowerbeds we crowd, some praying,

some bowing as the world, minute as it is,

stays in motion: box stores doing business,

fast food joints, and above us a crow,

secular bird, lighting on a lamppost

while we take pictures or cry as if we could

live forever in this gloried surround,

gazing up at the window holding her bleared

hair, her mouth that is a frenzy of trapped

pollen or dust, eyes like smooth shells

that make us forget what fertilized

the flowers at our feet, bulbs fortified

with potash or bone meal, dried blood,

which reminds me of the Annunziata

I saw in Italy, painted by those who thought

color itself was divine: crushed shell,

coral and ash, pigments mixed with egg

in a man’s mouth, and I worry about

standing too close to the believers, I who

rubberneck and lie, do I stand too close

to the woman at least six months along

with her own child, waving a sonogram

with a faint infant shape inside, an image

scratched by waves: light squandered here,

dilated there, compressed oil and dust

as every body contains its atlas of salt,

kiss-worn, and always some bud dreamed

in springtime, and though I’m a yarner

and one for whom doubt is a clutched root,

I can’t yet walk to my car, standing here

wondering if after His birth the virgin girl

saw the rest of her life would be nothing

but a way to talk about that morning:

gold nearly blinding, herdsmen and kings,

and with its broad warm tongue

a cow licking the afterbirth from the hay.

Translator's Notes:

Q & A: David Roderick

The poem discusses religious belief from the perspective of one for whom “doubt is a clutched root.” Is there a risk in writing from this perspective?

I hope I’ve addressed any risk by respecting the poem’s “believers.” If the poem is lucky enough to find an audience, it’s likely due to the speaker’s imaginative wonder as a corrective to his own religious doubt. And I think he tries hard to be earnest in making sense of what he experiences in this moment. I’m hoping his doubt seems utterly human to most readers.

In this regard, the metaphor you’ve cited possibly gives him (and, by proxy, me) some wiggle room. Can a clutched root be pulled free? Is the root doing the clutching, or does some human (or non-human) hand clutch it? I hadn’t realized, until you drew my attention to it, how puzzling that particular metaphor actually is.

This poem’s ending is reminiscent of Bishop’s “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance,” in which the speaker sees details of an “old Nativity” and “looked and looked [her] infant sight away.” Was that poem in your mind at all?

I confess I don’t know the Bishop poem very well, though you’ve prompted me to read it and see the connection. Months after writing my poem I saw a few parallels with Philip Larkin’s work, especially poems like “High Windows” and “Church Going.” I happened to be reading a lot of Larkin while working through my drafts, and he seems to have slipped inside my poem’s mindset. My speaker would especially understand the “awkward reverence” expressed in “Church Going” and also this confession near the end: “It pleases me to stand in silence here.”

I can’t remember what was in my mind while I was writing. I’d spent some time in Florence gazing at beautiful Renaissance paintings of the Madonna. Soon enough, I grew tired of all those pudgy cherubs and gilt haloes. I began wondering about Mary in human terms, carrying God’s son inside her, and the events in the manger and their aftermath. I think it’s sad she nearly vanishes from the biblical stories that follow. We rarely see her after Christ’s birth.

There’s an ancient tradition of the poeta vates, or poet as visionary. Is this a visionary poem—or maybe an “anti-visionary” poem?

I’ve had to do some research on this, but it sounds like the poeta vates was akin to a shaman or performer given duende-like powers. The goal was to create a collective fervor. I certainly wouldn’t call the poem’s speaker (or myself) visionary in that sense, but I hope the imagery and rhythms exhibit an ordinary man’s extraordinary moment of vision, something similar to one of Wordsworth’s “spots of time.” It seemed important, at the end of the poem, to counteract the strong feeling of transcendence with a simple, visceral image.

Source: Poetry (December 2010)

Q & A: David Roderick

The Sun and Shadows