Loreto

Reading:

Loreto

One day we hired a Vespa to ride across the Marche to Loreto.
Although it happened nearly sixty years ago
I still see in my memory the movie idyll of a perfect summer day.
Shirts and shorts, blonde hair blowing in the wind, spirits light and gay, 
She clung behind me as we drove down alleys high with ripening saggina. 
Our destination was a church: The Basilica da Santa Casa.
But we had little interest in the Holy House, still less in Black Madonna. 
We’d come to see a fresco by Melozzo da Forli.

When we got there pilgrims had already crammed the square.
Quite by chance we’d happened on a festival: the anointing of the sick.
We sat in the shade of the great arcade (confessions heard
In many languages) to watch the sad procession.
With their nurses clad in blue they came,
Some in wheelchairs, others carried out on stretchers to be
Laid in rows in the piazza. Patiently they waited under scorching sun. 
Resplendent in full ceremonial regalia, priests emerged from temple portico, 
Censers swinging, lots of chanting, crucifixes held aloft before them.
Up and down the rows of still, white-sheeted supplicants they strode, 
Pausing for a moment to administer a blessing to each one.

We were too far off to hear and even if we had been close I knew no Latin. 
So what they said each time they stopped to bless was lost on me.
But none took up their bed and walked - at least so far as I could see.
(No one dropped dead either, though the heat was killing.)
Was all this just churchy mumbo-jumbo that I could have no part in? 
Young and full of health and more than full of student rationality
I disparaged it with angry scorn and stalked away to find Melozzo. 
Later on when we’d got home I’d time to think upon the matter.
The faithful had paid for their hospital care so prayer was fair
And anyway a dab of two of holy water wouldn’t do them any harm.

But I was more than thankful that I got my loved-one home in safety.
(The word comes easy to the tongue but to whom should I offer thanks? 
That Awful God of childhood Sunday School or this Catholic one
Who, so believers say, had magicked Joseph’s house from Palestine?) 
Without warning tarmac road had given out. She terrified, me alarmed
We bounced along on rock and then on slippery sand and gravel.
(I’d not ridden since those years in Cambridge in another life.)
By luck - or was it instinct - I held off the brakes and we bumped back 
When proper tarmac road began again, to ride once more unharmed.
I realised in that instant it was I who had been blessed that day.
I knew too, as she rode with me and the sun went down behind Loreto,
I’d been not merely blessed, but by her beauty I’d been healed.
You could call that a miracle.