Auto De Fe

Step into the square with emphatic strength
to witness the trial of faith
the mass will be preached in empathic length
edifying humiliation
for a billion primetime viewers
behind a billion dark glass veils

Put on you cilice, hair-shirt or iron-maiden cap
join the throng here in the Plaza Mayor
or here in the Plaza Corredera, here since 1481
Seville-born and boisterous, theatrical
sensational, ecclesiastical and civil -
now watch them come to
shave the heads of the apostates
scared heretics, scourged disbelievers
shame them in processions of filth
for ever dreaming differently, or whispering
(I have heard them)
‘I enrage the genitals of Davros with bananas’

You and I Inquisitorial,
anti-seditionary authority throned
in the jaded tear of red Vatican silk
to hear proclamation and sentence merge -
we policemen of god take a Jesuit stance
two for each dead man walking
interceding for the soul
decorously gagging each mouth

contritio – I’m so sorry
confessio – yes, it was me
satisfactio – I deserve all I get

Prepare the quemadero, the burning place
where we all relate to red-faced otherness
in porkchop flames and longpig streaks of bacon char -
we will hear the conversions first and
disposed unto mercy, let the garrotte be primed -
but flame the faces of these whoremongers
luego resuelto, lets the crowd build
and while we’re about it, throw on the corpses
of those who died under persuasion
let them feed the fire for their former friends,
with effigies too, of the already fled

Condemned to burn, billed for the privilege
soul queered over coals of despair
trust immolated, wounds seared shut
the spectacle rising in new apparition
barbarous sin expunged in civility -
god its hot here and I thought I saw a viper
crawl horridly through this cauterised brain
and there again, by the ovulating pope
a branch of mutton that once was your sister
clustered in flesh-ropes of melting skin
spelling ‘desire’, Latinate tails in the curl
of blue fire and dream fire -
wild screams within the carelessly rotted stake
we are pinned to but freed from

Who by fire in the heart of the crowd
who in the gold and mitre of office
who with the brand and garrotte in his hand
hooded and bent to his killing task?
Who in judgement tightly wrapped
who in the leer of election night
who in the glow of ancient green light
who ripped open in horse play
who in power at the crown of sighs
who in blindness to the orange skies
who at the terminal boarding
who keying orange juice futures by laptop
forgot the earth and her wet clay
forgot to breathe and pushed her away
seizing the wrist of the shortest day
that must be punished for what it might say
and for love, destroyed the fruit of love
for peace, eviscerated babies with shrapnel
for purity, fed the furnace with flesh
for enlightenment, drank black bile
from the fountain of hopelessness
for health, killed the soul of the world
for beauty, cut off Her lips and nose,
made tasteless marionettes from her hair
to mock and smear Her murder in lies
reported as justice, as no surprise at
the end of history triumphal
memory gone extinct
clash of civilizations
lacking civility
clucking madly
across time
and space
and race
waiting
for an
angel
to blow
the horn
plenty
of
empty
at saxophone time
your way, my way, no way
life knows only one way, open
motherly, embracing and otherly
in blood and milk and mud and silk and
bone and teeth and hair and scale, feather and leaf
stem and trunk, shell and beak and cellular pulsing, in
mitochondria and fractal consciousness, in rock and magma
and salt sea water, in rain and snow and the desert heat, prickly pear
and lemongrass nests, the flash of a salmon in bear river rapids
the screech of seagull, old yearning of wolves
gales in the ocean, bees in the petal-field
life in diversity uniting, unfolding
creating spaces and endless spaces, supporting
compassionate action
nothing to grow and nowhere to go
the play of forms in ceaseless dancing
tripled and tripled and tripled again
yielding flow, beyond language and thinking
animate substance, inscaped forgiveness, foreverness,
spaciousness gifted in sentient arcs, free and unparalleled
allowable, liveable, streaming fire-tears alive in a simple new rain
between faith and fate, fair and free, hope smelted to crystalline gems
wish-fulfilling cataracts, bone-fuelled and more beautiful in being
than any papal/presidential/kingly sanctioned dream – world-born,
earth–fruited, squeezed by life from ashen debt
rising on trenchant butterfly wings, the deathless death’s head smiling.



kh 3.10.06

IMAGES: Burning of the Heretics (Auto-da-fé), (c. 1500) by Pedro Berruguete, Auto-da-fe on Plaza Mayor, (1683) by Francisco Rizi. Both paintings in Museo del Prado, Madrid.