Thursday, October 20, 2022

The Anachronism of Place Names

The rats are on the beach,
Mayonnaise in the bottle,
The hills of San Berdu
Another Golgotha

For Christs to pop like mushrooms
And pimple the rolling lavender
Where sacrifice is sold
For the sake of the Romans

Where all roads end,
At the Vatican Library specifically,
Where the books of truth are held
Against their will,

Sequestered from the world,
The copies destroyed, fake records left
In their wake like mosquito dander
After the blood is taken

To seal a precious few
Of the too, too many holes
In non-existent history,
Where themes would otherwise skirt away

From the story made for applause
Not accuracy,
To cordon off, in this case, the heady days
Of rebellion into surrender

Evangelicized as the good news
Of military conquest, as when Titus had
The zealots his followers killed fished out
Of the Galilee, for example.

The salt of lizards we long for so much
Turns out worthless, a pestilence,
A yeasty scent, though nothing else
Can compensate the victims, us.