Margaret Alice (The Crystal Age / Pretoria - South Africa)

The lonely malnourished Spanish man who lives
by himself in a house without a kitchen practising
Franciscan-learnt Latin; the lonely widow offering
Nicholas Shrady a walking stick, the poor people in
Bosnia relying on apparitions of the Virgin Mary
for an income, the bloated corpses in the Ganges

Lonely hamlets in India where people live and die
without ever learning to read and write, the young
boys with rotting teeth working like pack animals;
the learned young man in Jerusalem who could not
find a job due to his Palestinian Christian descent –

Impressed by a true pilgrimage, Nicholas Shrady’s
ability to travel on foot – relying along the way on
strangers for accommodation and food,

Seeing so much misery, so much hatred and bigotry,
criminal banditry and decadence – and yet still read
his religious books as he lay down at night; Bible,
Koran, Vedas, balanced by Gerald Manley Hopkins’
poetry…

Trying my best to cheer up again, sad images
stuck in my mind…

“Sacred Roads” by Nicholas Shrady; Penguin
Books 2000