POETRY

CONVERT OR DIE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read613 views

In a large chamber behind the colossal

Doric colonnades four columns deep –

Bernini’s ‘maternal arms of mother church’ –

that enclose both sides of St Peter’s Square

is an exhibition: How Christ Was Brought

To The New World. There are extensive maps

and long lists of dates, the occasional

Christian martyr’s cross or chasuble,

and illustrations of happy converts,

but not a hint of the laying waste

to inconvenient cultures, the blood

and lamentation, the casuistry,

the theft, and servitude.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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David Selzer

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2 Comments
  • Alex Cox
    February 26, 2023

    Rome is the centre of the Western Empire, boss. In 1980 I saw an exhibition in the Colliseum, showing Mussolini’s architectural plans for Rome. These included a massive, silver, triumphal arch.

    This disturbed me quite a bit, because I’d seen the finished piece the previous year, in St Louis, MO, where the Americans had built Il Duce’s arch as their ‘Gateway to The West’.

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