Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 113

POETRY: CATHARINE SAVAGE BROSMAN

drew near the city gate, El Cid, behind
him on his steed, named Babieca, passed
a small, unprepossessing mosque. The horse
stopped suddenly and knelt, in awe and prayer;
a holy light, miraculous, appeared.
For underneath the mosque lay vestiges
of what had been a Visigothic church
the Muslims had destroyed. Proof of the grace
of God, perhaps-the Christian 	
warhorse touched,
illuminated, and his rider sure
of his salvation. When Toledo fell
again to Moorish bands, El Cid fought well,
his reputation bright; no help could be refused.
He won Valencia, ruled five years, and died.
His widow took the body, with his horse,
sword, armor, to an abbey in the north,
San Pedro de Cardeña, where the monks
prepared his winding cloth and wove his myth.
For Babieca, on his death, a tomb,
a stele, as for an instrument of faith.

This poem traces briefly important episodes in the career of El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar),
including transfer of his body by his widow from Valencia, which took place three years after
his death. The historic fact is that when Alfonso VI of Castile entered Toledo, whose acquisition
he had carefully planned and carried out, in 1085, El Cid was not with him; he remained in exile
until late 1086. But legends, multiplying around him, placed him with the king. The present
one, involving Babieca, is based on a version told by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a nineteenthcentury Spanish author.
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Modern Age - Winter 2017

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