HELP ME PLEASE I WILL MARK BRANLIEST FOR CORRECT AND FIRST ANSWER
There are 36 lines in the poem. The poem is numbered every 5 lines. ,end italics,
,begin bold,A Saddle & the World,end bold,
In Palestine, an old disheveled street,
a wall of tiny shops, where grass grows between crumpled stone,
I stand and watch in the shadow of the wall.
Pots and tin pans and brooms and woven straw mats,
even handmade saddles, spill into the narrow street.
Heavy saddles, covered with burlap, to fit horses,
mules, donkeys, sewn by someone who knows saddles.
A woman in a ,begin italics,thobe,end italics,—a long black dress,
hand-embroidered with red cross-stitching on chest and sides—
pokes around the saddles.
Bending down, she touches, pats, caresses,
like a woman buying cloth.
Finally she lifts her head, then do-si-dos,superscript,1,baseline,
toward the bald man who owns the shop
and asks the price of the saddle she likes best.
But the price isn't set in stone and will change, like the weather,
if you have some smarts at this haggling game.
Like fencing,,superscript,2,baseline, you dance with agile steps around each other,
touch with the point of your foil,,superscript,3,baseline, but never wound.
He says, she says. Words fly, as conductor-hands
sweep the air for emphasis. The woman nods,
and a corner of her mouth lifts. She fingers the coins
inside the slit in her belt.
"Sold! To the woman in embroidered dress!" the auctioneer would call out
if she lived in Texas. Or Oklahoma. Or even New York.
But in Palestine where she lives, a thousand women in embroidered
dresses
would stand to claim the prize.
I, in the uniform of my faded American jeans,
ask the woman a foolish question,
"How will you take this saddle home?"
The woman's face cracks open, a smile spills out.
Squatting, she picks up the saddle, an Olympian heavyweight champion,
she hoists the saddle in the air, then lowers it onto her head.
She stands tall, this Palestinian Yoga-woman, her head not merely holding
a saddle,
But the world.
("A Saddle & the World" by May Mansoor Munn. Copyright © 1998 by May Mansoor Munn. Used by permission of the author.)
,begin bold,,superscript,1,baseline,do-si-do ,end bold,a circular dance move in which partners pass each other back-to-back
,begin bold,,superscript,2,baseline,fencing ,end bold, the art of using a small sword (foil) to practice self-defense and offensive movements with an opponent
,begin bold,,superscript,3,baseline,foil ,end bold, a small, light sword with a blunt edge and tip (used in fencing)
