New Every Morning
The mountains have a cloud on top of them
this morning. South of Bogota an hour
the paramo will lie in the dim glare
and pools reflect a grey, metallic sky;
the light shines with a brightness threatening
because it hurts the corners of the eye.
The frailejones push their pointed leaves,
grow imperceptibly in the weird light.
The panels of an early bus reflect
the white, fluorescent light. The grey bars shine,
the seats are hard; the panels of the floor
rumble away. Notice the people there.
The nodding, sleeping and the waiting face
look down, look out the window and avoid.
A pregnant woman stands: her hair is up,
the strays are tucked behind her too-large ears,
her cheeks puff out a little like a frog,
and on her features is a vapid look
as dully she assimilates: there is
before her an abruptly opened door;
she is distracted with something within
and deep, and it is good. The faces crowd
around this morning in the bus; they seem
today not beautiful but of the stamp
and character the country bears. The face,
together, of Colombians on the bus,
with their peculiarities of life
under these troubled skies, these broken clouds,
these clearing and serene, and these replete
with bright, white stars—the faces join to make
a constellation of Colombian type.
Out of the drought I ask the Lord for rain—
with vague unease, as one asks for a sign,
a token of the goodness of the Lord.
The skies are troubled overhead. There is
a chance. When in the station I receive
some small, preliminary drops I’m glad,
no . . . overwhelmed, and ask the Lord one day
to make me have the faith to ask for rain
unwaveringly, for rain from a blue sky.
With clouds today, with grey and mountain fog,
this is the way God gently leads the young.
God’s eyes are on the earth to show himself,
as he wants, strong. The Lord is good, and yet
we tend to think the Lord is easily
often offended or upset: we have
so many sins. The Lord knows all our deep
intractable pollution and is right
when justly angry with our sin each day.
We want to find protection for ourselves
avoiding the benevolence which from above
comes down like an invasion. The bright
metallic surfaces and light we would
be blinded to, protected from, walled-up
against. The lesson is not to be closed.
Here is a truth about our gestures:
the Lord rebuked the house of Judah once
when they refused to ask a sign, a sign
of the false piety of youthfulness.
Old men who do not ask for signs cannot
be old enough to die. Ask for a sign:
the Lord is known to work through means, and is
not distant; he is near and kind.
That he is good is true and beautiful.
Colombian culture does not tend to be
mechanically efficient but is full
instead of gestures and of meaning’s signs.
I think efficiency in many ways
is cumbered and inhibited by meaning.
The way you hand an object to another
matters here. Efficiency will yield
just cold efficiency, but if you wait
to hand you will receive again. Is that
not like the goodness of the Lord?
They notice like I do not notice, but
I notice that they notice and begin
to notice and to practice as they do.
It is a truth about our gestures,
and all truth is important. We must know
the truth in such a way that it is lived.
Inside the crowded bus if you go slow
and give the people time to shift aside
as you squeeze through, you turn your exiting
into an organismal effort. You
get out with a new sense of human touch
of contact, of withiness, something gentle
of being born into Colombian ways.
God also uses signs. “Ask for a sign,”
and is displeased when we do not. He works
through means to shine the brightness of his light
obliquely in our tender eyes even
on clouded, rainy days when all the pools
stare upward, blank. We grow as slowly as
the humble highland frailejones do.
The lesson is emphatic and pronounced
emphatically, harsh like blowing wind
upon the humble; glorious as the bright
and windy uplands near to heaven’s vault:
Do not protect yourself; you’re in the womb
and must be born out of this present world.
Unknowing 