“Can you spare seven cents?”
I drop two quarters into
his paper cup,
& he runs after me, saying,
“Man, I can’t take this.
I don’t want to get rich.”
I notice the 1st Cav. patch
on his fatigue jacket. He smells like
he slept in a field of mint.
He says that he’s Benedict
the Moor. Of course, I’ve
never heard of the fellow.
Two days later, I spot him
outside Cody’s Bookstore
& reach into my pocket,
fingering the pennies. He says,
“I’m not begging today, brother.
I’m just paying penance.”
He goes back to scrubbing
the sidewalk with a wirebrush.
His black & white mutt
stands there; she guards him
at night while he sleeps
under a crown of stars.
I find what I’m looking for
at the Berkeley Library.
He was born in Sicily
on the estate of Chevalier de Lanza
at San Fratello, the son
of African slaves.
He sold the lumbering oxen
he’d labored years to buy,
gave the money to the poor,
& followed Father Lanza, pledging
a Lenten vow. After the caves
in the mountains near Palermo,
he went to live in a rocky cell
on Mount Pellegrino where
the Duke of Medina-Coeli
visited & built him a chapel.
All the titles at his feet,
Benedict the Moor
rejected. He couldn’t
read or write, but recited biblical
passages for days.
Wearing just a few leaves,
he predicted the death
of Princess Bianca,
made the sign of the cross
to give the blind sight. Here
was a man who hid in a thicket
from a crowd’s joy.
The Duchess of Montalvo
bowed often before him,
but she never saw his eyes.
“Into thy hands, O Lord,
I commend my spirit,”
were his last words. Three months
later, I sit in The Blue Nile
eating with my hands,
folding pieces of spicy chicken
into spongy white bread
thin as forgiveness,
knowing that one hand
is sacred & the other is used
to clean oneself with leaves
or to clutch a dagger. No one
ever touched Benedict the Moor’s
hands. Not even the Duchess.
They kissed the hem of his habit.
In Palermo, the senate burned
fourteen torches of white wax
in his honor. When I step out
under Berkeley’s cool stars,
I see the face I thought
lost in the Oakland Hills
when eucalyptus created
an inferno. I walk up
to him, fingering a nickel
& two pennies. He says,
“Can you spare three cents?”
Originally published in the December 1993/January 1994 issue of Boston Review