Cordoba

the sky ablack with brooding,
snapping,
flashing with ill-tempered ire

Their ancient marble arches,
their mosaics.
This hallowed hall still echoes
muezzin and mass
(like cousins estranged),
smells and scents,
shuffling feet...

Tourists scatter, as primeval gods
attempt a cleansing, we,
we imitators of the oldest of natural rituals,
the flood rebirth.

forgotten apex of the Old World,
you trampled western mecca,
you're become bone-weary-wise,
fatigued of politics,
soulsick of polemic and purging,

thou sage,
tired of this heavy world,
disillusioned of the next,
genuflecting to the final god,
what will be, shall be

(10/10/05)

Discovered this in an old notebook this morning. Only slightly retouched. I wrote it while hiding from a monsoon rain a bar one afternoon.

It helps if you know that Cordoba has the largest mosque in the western world. If I remember right it dates back to around the 10th century. Slap bang in the middle of the mosque, some (clearly insane) later medieval christians built a rather ostentatious catholic chapel, in the context it's just as grotesquely nouveau-riche gauche as you might imagine. unsurprisingly the city has a history of violent purges of one side or the other or more often the jews. the site is now a significant tourist attraction, and to me carried an air of self-loathing at the futile destructive hate all such fanaticism engenders.