“
Now reading
San Sabas
There is here an ancient anchorite
Who so spring-like shows
That on a cliff inaccessible
«He tended his mystic rose,
Intoxicate with April and hair-cloth
And censers; and over all-
Since no earthly dew fell there-
The dew celestial.
He lived remote in a cave
Viscous as an evil mind;
Amid thistles and brambles
He was animal and divine.
Porto Rico
The thorn spoke to his feet
With an especial blessing
By his blood sanctified.
No flower its perfumes shed
On that gentle old body,
An azure calin possessing.
Little poisonous creatures
Were his only friends, and gray
Mists were dispelled from his eyelids
When he began to pray.
Below him the pale hamlet
A flock at dawn seemed to be;
And the sonorous sound of the anvil,
The bell of eternity:
Men going to the mountain,
And women to their praying,
Children to their playing,
Dogs to their barking,
Oxen to the plow,
Cows to the milking;
All birds to flight
And all the flights to sea,
All seas to the wind,
All the winds to blowing,
All the blowing to life,
All life to labor.
And above this intranquillity,
In the refuge he had made,
San Sabas, ample as a tree,
Giving his paternal shade.
Luis Palés Matos