A tourguide with a cyst on his forehead beckons
an audience to duck through archways packed with things.
The severity of Torquemada haunts his fingertips
as they spread and dart above the treasure-chest,
nativity statuary painted in essence of ocean and blood-
Joseph's blue robe concealing silvery script in fish-stalls,
Portuguese riches: banks of sea-bass, eels, sardines.
Only a strangeiro, with untrained eyes, un-Portuguese ears,
I listen to the guide's narrative, recited as much
by spidery fingers as by voice. He summons
nativity scenes framed in cedar needles, glass bells
that have suffocated bunches of flowers for centuries --
their petals dappled, brown as stuffed animals
spiked on walls around, foxes and wolves from Geres.
Then I guess we're directed to Galician relics,
but being tourist - strangeiro, to my ears - able
to pick and choose
I walk outside, past votive candles, past flames
jerked by damp winds, to breath in and out
and in again, the gray drizzly air Braga offers me today.
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