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Crusades

POETRY

CONVERT OR DIE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K 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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POETRY

CIVIL WARS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.7K views

After the horsemen and the slaves, before
the Stalins and the Hitlers, were the skilful
cities – cosmopolitan, pragmatic,
loud and solemn with towers, spires, domes.

There are some who would reprise a fictive past,
revert from countries of convenience
to imaginary nations, ignore
the corrupting legacy of empire,
the corrupted remittance of colonies,
oil trumping Crusades and martyrdom.

Europe could break like a slate across old
fault lines – a slate smudged with alphabets.
Europe could rub out its history.

There are swastikas in Brick Lane and Berlin,
lampooning in Paris and Soho.
When liberty is assassinated,
freedom is curbed by the rationale
of abhorrence, the politics of outrage –
Jews, Christians, Muslims, the conflicted peoples
of The Book confounded. So, whose Europe?

The cities are filled still with parks and squares.
Storks, pigeons, starlings roost above music
and commerce. After the horsemen and the slaves…

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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