David Blanton- Walking on Water (out of class reading)

This is a poem selected from Sister Maura's book, Walking on Water entitled "Letter from a Peace Corps volunteer"

The muslim women are so beautiful you write

lingering on batik sarongs, coral and melodic shells

Then you say you build sand mosques on the white

beach at Jolo with children whose breath smells

hungry death. I hear you speak to them in slow 

Tagalog with smiles and though-out junctures like

college French. They understand. I know 

you write this letter after tears, the ache

of their need crusting the muscles of your throat

till they seem to dry like rocks as tide moves out.

The poem is obviously referring to a powerful, moving experience someone serving in the Peace Corps must have written Sister Maura about. The poem describes the powerful experience this person had. Evidently he or she encountered extreme poverty in a Muslim nation where he spent time with children that were danger of starvation. This exchange the person had with the children left them in a feeling of anguish as they realized their inability to substantially impact the situation.

What I would like to talk about is the role that beauty plays both as a vehicle for story telling. The poem is divided into three stanzas, that seem to take the reader into three different stages. The first paints a beautiful picture of the setting as the character sees the beautiful dress of the Muslim women and then the reader is introduced to this beautiful scene of a white beach where children are playing. The last two words (breath smells) marks the transition into the next stage where suddenly the reader is made aware of the dire situation the people of this area are actually in. The playfulness remains in the "slow Tagalog" but it is contrasted with the harshness of "hungry death" and "the ache." Finally the third stage lays bare the character's deep longing and concern for these children and people. 

Sister Maura uses vivid and beautiful language in the poem to paint an almost tranquil scene that is juxtaposed with the gravity of the situation. This richness of the beauty in the poem magnifies the sorrow and mourning the character experiences. It is because he or she is enamored with the beauty of the women, the white beach, and the children that the character finds so much pain in their pain. In conclusion, beauty enables people to connect more intimately, even to the point where the pain the beautiful object experiences causes its beholder that same pain.