Auto De Fe' At Plaza Mayor
Sixteen-Eighty was brutal on saints and their hissing cats.
A turgid June, thickened as it was by an immature sanguinary wine
failed to quench the civil mob.
Above the birthday cake façade,the pink and cerise porticos,
the heavenly-frocked casements, the stucco -
a tiered sibilance rises were the throng, in a sportive sweat,
begets its feverish desires.
The accused stand center-stage, as hairless as Sphinx
garnished by sheens of fear.
Some contemplate the ornate state of their theatrical ruin.
Some already lash their minds behind unfocused eyes.
That was then; I see all this through a painting,
yet I am here now, and the square still seeps
through a varnish of time.
Suddenly eveing flaps a checkered flag.
The plaza is suddenly a pitch for celebrating revelers.
Real Madrid fans have surged out of the barra.
Soccer balls are dribbled over cobbles.
I imagine my hapless head plunging in and out
of the heedless crowd.. I am their sport,
a candidate for a mocking inquisition.
Meanwhile, the cats stare patiently,
squeezed as they are into strips of sunset,
a pink Iberian tongue of light that streaks the floodlit scene.
This place could be a place for only jubilation, were it not
for the sotto voce hissing of these time-stretched
hissing shadows.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2019
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