Auto de fé at the Plaza Mayor

[Sparkydashforth]

Sixteen-Eighty was brutal
on saints and their hissing cats.
A turgid June, thickened as it was
by a coarse sanguinary wine
failed to quench the civil mob.

Above the cupcake façade,
the pink and cerise portico’s,
the heavenly-frocked casements,
a tiered sibilance rises,
while the throng, in a merry sweat,
crows its maundering spite.

The accused stand center-stage,
as hairless as Sphinx.
Some contemplate the ornate venue,
some lash ther minds
behind unfocused eyes,
while ermin-robed judgements
screak at purged flesh.
　
Time waves its checkered flag,
the plaza is suddenly a race-track
for fervent revelers.
Real Madrid fans have surged out of the barra.
Soccer balls are dribbled over cobbles.
I am jostled as they circle me.
I am their new sport,
perhaps a candidate for further inquisition?
Out of control, the ball spins onward
seeking its own inarticulate goals.

The cats fume and glare,
pinched as they are into strips of sunset,
a pink Iberian tongue of light
that pleats the floodlit square.
An ancient pigment has bubbled through
the stucco-laden fascia,

a sputter of dogma,
a malignancy that daubs a garish spangle
on long whispering shadows.