Tomar

The lamb ran out, called, posed beneath a white rose-bush.

The famous rose-window was no Notre Dame.

The stone-dead Christ in his glass box blurred by flowered

gauze.

The busy beata couldn't say which altar the bishop was

buried

in front of, the notable tiles had been taken away

to be done something to. The rose-bush hung impassive,

whiter than the white self-advertising lamb.

The dogs went by muzzled in the heat of the fair-day,

the peasants clumped purposeful in fur collars, clutching

rolled black umbrellas like weapons and fetishes; loquats

ridiculous fruit and olives black and shiny as the hair

of the smart young men jostled in the market-place,

a busker was very amusing for hours (at the expense of

a sheepish grinning boy who bore it for one-and-three-

pence),

and turned out in the end to be selling a cure-all in a silvery

tube.

The lamb in a sidestreet struck his poses underneath his

white roses,

and above all this gallimaufry of tawdry and pittoresque

the failed mélange of architectural styles on its hill justified

itself

by the great doorway and the two great windows.

Above the great doorway the stone is the color of ivory.