Thinking About Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, Mártir
Joined by Emily Dickinson, Muriel Rukeyser, and Theodore Roethke
San Manuel . . . the priest who kept
his poor parish in the faith
burnished their bright hope of heaven
(hope is a thing with feathers)
it is best not to think these days
about what . . . what the newspapers report so reasonably
. . . (I lived in the first century of world wars,
. . . most days I was more or less insane)
today’s weather . . . an endless rain of feathers
when the passenger pigeon . . . now extinct
had not yet been converted
to fashion . . . slaughtered . . . its plumage plucked
for the elegant hats of American women
. . . (those catlike immaculate
. . . . . . creatures for whom the world works)
when the migrating flocks still passed
overhead . . . a billion strong . . . the farmers said
bird lime turned the woods white
the sky was dark for a week
And San Manuel? Late in the story we learn
he did not believe in the hope
he kept alive . . . believing as he did
(like his author) in the sustaining power
of fiction
by Elenor Wilner
from Poetry
Poetry Magazine, 2006