O coniferous center
We plead, we whisper into your ever-pardoning ear
Here, a hymn radiating
from a diaphragm of solid gold
Here, a goat sacrificed in your name
Fists, fits, shame.
Here, I bow, I weep,
I sweep this most exquisite temple
Lord, forgive us
For carrying the cots of unbelievers
for thinking the godless
deserve healing
For sharing
our salt and bread
The Bubonic plague of the fourteenth century is identified by historians as one of the reasons that led to the rise of intolerance and the persecution of the Jewish, Muslim and non-catholic populations across Iberia, adding to the conditions that bought about the eventual collapse of the great conivivencia or peaceable coexistence of the Abrahamic people in Spain under Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. The plague, known as the Black Death was considered by clerics as a divine punishment for accepting nonbelievers.
This poem appears in BAKER OF TARIFA, published by Poetic Matrix Press, 2011.