The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run, outside the three tiers of churches built in honour of St Francis, brother of the poor, talker with birds, over whom he had the advantage of not being dead yet. when i first read this poem, i really never understood it. but i've studied it for the last week. i've got to admit i love it A priest explained how clever it was of Giotto to make his frescoes tell stories that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness of God and the suffering of His Son. I understood the explanation and the cleverness. A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly, fluttered after him as he scattered the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed the ruined temple outside, whose eyes wept pus, whose back was higher than his head, whose lopsided mouth said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child's when she speaks to her mother or a bird's when it spoke to St Francis.