The Alhambra Decree

Fortify now:

You have lost

your astrolabe and cast adrift where souls find no purchase …

sent to the bottom of the sea and left to die

You, pathfinder

your celestial measurements, your calibration, your metrics, your calculus

them out to sea to die

you not the land, the lie,

the land and its lie,

its garden lacking live fish,

its garden shorn of stars

You court astronomer:

were left to die in the engorged abdomen of the pregnant sea

to save his soul from profanation by the creator of the astrolabe, the

crystal compass, the

copper staves,

you

well

you

yes, and

you,

you,

have drowned your son.

Leave a Reply