The Poetry Society Celebrating our centenary

Church stones humidify;

dusk is wringing out the day's

sweat to holiness.

 

A Barcelona wind-band plays

under windows reglazed from

republican rifle-butts.

 

A bloated moon lies face-up

on the bay; fishing boats

bait the sea with light.

 

Christ is still as a moth,

a lepidopterist's exact passion, pinned

above barbed wire thorns.

 

Bullets are stilled here, hate hidden,

the brindled blood of fratricide

drained to sacrament.

 

Here the señoras cool Falla's dance,

their fans an elegant, synchronised

farewell.

 

A bat flickers out above the altar,

buffeted by rapid hands, not knowing

its wings are banned here -

 

it should be music unites us, Christ's

pained forgiveness, but what moves our

heads in unison is a bat

 

rising in music's thermals - Shostakovich's

sad polka, its rhythm of shuffling

suspects chained.

 

A girl who lay topless on the beach

an hour ago flicks back her hair

and sighs.

 

Your eyes close, intent and tearful

at our last night in this place;

the bat's wings ululate a silence

an echoed ecstasy

of space.