Margie walking to Deya

Auf dem Weg nach Deya - On the way to Deya 38,5 x 28,5 cm

MARGIE

Yes, Margie, Roanoke is in Virginia, and a wall of blue mountains

forms a backdrop in the rain and there’s an airport too

mainly for transit flights between G.I. towns

like Fayetteville and Columbus and a few other camouflaged enclaves

and thence to somewhat better known destinations. Once when

passing through on my way to I don’t know where and

   just enough of a “cherry” to be wearing

the uniform when on leave or TDY, I was cornered by a short, young woman

in flowing hippie drag who tried to sell me a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita

or some kindred scripture—I wasn’t up on Hindu mythology—and I 

was ready to blow her off when she told me I looked handsome in uniform—  

   what could I do but give her

a couple of bucks, and thus end up incongruously with a book from whose 

cover a multi-limbed deity with blue skin smiled out at the material world? 

When she moved almost dancingly away I noticed 

   a fairly well-disguised limp. She might have been

wearing bells around her ankles. It’s even possible I heard

their tinkling, vaguely mystical music, not at all like that of an ice-cream truck,   

two or three blocks away, on a summer afternoon, and you

   skip-skipping into the house for money. It was your club foot that made you

skip-skip instead of run-run. And the girl’s limp made me remember that foot, Marge,

                             and how you treated it

the way a loving mother treats her afflicted child, with affection and subdued pain.

Not at all how Josef Goebbels felt about his club foot, or Oedipus about his,

as they swung their burdens into the darker shades

                                                             of history and myth, and became them. 

Arvo Pärt - Collage sur Bach