The Barbaric Yawp

The Pagan Virgin

On that day,

even the little virgin looked up with quizzical eyes

as she was carried along in her glass cage

bumping up and down in the carriage.

Flowers and palm leaves

spread out behind the makeshift wooden house,

the altar of the pagan virgin.

Sitting next to her,

a thin woman in her late forties,

a basket of flowers in her lap,

firmly gripped the railing of the horse-drawn carriage.

She wore a small-rimmed white hat,

under which wild strands of thin hair

spiked out to all sides in the wind,

like the palm leaves behind her.

She watched the huasito with an air of skepticism

as he drove the carriage in an elegant, white,

wide-rimmed hat and jacket,

a colorful shawl neatly folded

and thrown over one shoulder.

These eccentric hippy festivities were a mystery to him

but he was content to draw the carriage

down the middle of a paved city road

in the barrio of Peñalolén,

into the gates of the eco-community.

His leathery, sun-tanned skin looked handsome in white.

His quick, dark eyes were on the lookout for cars racing down the hill.

Next to him, his plump, pale daughter, sat calmly, decorated

in a traditional dress and light pink glasses.

She gazed at the masses of people watching on the street,

her thoughts impenetrable.

Rasta-haired drummers beat a steady beat,

girls with roses and feathers danced in long, colorful skirts.

A man held up a huge paper-maché doll, lifted over his shoulders,

lined by the azure of amid-summer sky.

Was she proud to besitting in the carriage next to her father,

the center of the show,

carrying the pagan virgin

of this strange congregation of the eco-elite

past the rows of modest houses which lined the road Antupirén?

Or was there a slightly amused smirk on her lips?

Here eyes did their best not to betray the wall

that separated

them and

her.