He
dropped
what he
was doing.
After I had tried
to squeeze my
question
and
he
had tried
to squeeze his
answer past the long
language barrier, he left his
post at the bar at Loreto station and drove me
two miles to the hill town, home to the Sanctuary of the Holy House where it's said
Mary lived long before it was miraculously
transported away from danger
to rest here, in a
Christian land,
where it
would
be
safe.
Maybe
he feared I'd
do something unsafe
like try to walk there in the heat.
So he dropped me at the bus stop, pointed at the T,
the Tabacchi, where I could buy
my ticket. For I
was a new
pilgrim
to
my
version
of a shrine
in the next hill town,
Recanati, home to the house
where the poet Leopardi read and wrote and longed
to squeeze past parents' extreme control, to drop everything and leave, where the driver asked
if I knew the famous poem and, pointing toward
the valley spread out below, said,
"Là! L'Infinito!"—
almost as
if that
place
were
the one
we long for,
where barriers fall,
Babel's more than undone, and all
understand and speak out the one language from their souls.
