We can only imagine
what these two—
Francis and Fidel—
really had to say
to each other.
The Pope wondering
who really is the Holy Father here,
since everything he’s
preaching as holy
Fidel has already
fulfilled.
Fidel
seeing humor
in the Argentine’s unmistakable
Italian roots
and thinking pointedly
but not saying
politely,
like the good Jesuit
and Revolutionary he is:
My people have suffered
long enough:
Don’t mess this up.
God, it took you forever
to get to be Pope,
I imagine him saying
aloud.
You know it did!
Francis might reply.
And you know
exactly why:
that place I work at is a den
of murderers and thieves.
And if their stuff hadn’t
hit the fan:
evidence of
priests impregnating
in the past
and buggering white altar boys
in the present;
and folks starting to notice
the amount of stolen gold
and property
we have (enough to house, feed and clothe
pretty much every poor person on the planet)
they would never
have put me out here.
Climate Change
or no Climate Change.
I know, says Fidel.
They’re clever that way.
I used to wonder how you
stood it: sitting at the back
all those years
while they ruled
the world from every
parliament and throne.
Horrifically, too,
we can add.
And what about that apology business
that’s always trotted out?
They’re guilty of the torture and murder
of Earth and Her Peoples all over the place.
De Las Casas, for one, has told us
some of the worst of it.
And now they want to get away
with an apology!
Some don’t even want to do that, says Francis.
If the violated and exploited
took back their stolen lands and goods
from your fellow churchmen
and brutally drove them out of house
and home, after killing their parents
and enslaving their children,
would they be satisfied with an apology?
Oh, it’s been a challenge, all right.
I can testify to that, says Francis,
waving aside a camera.
And a personal one, for me:
it’s no fun
especially as you age,
to recognize your role
as a Conquistador
of Spirit.
A conqueror
of the people’s very spirits and souls!
The very definition of “devil”
I sometimes think.
When folks bow to me
I want to shout at them: bowing
to your masters
is what you were forced to do in the first place:
Straighten up!
And how bizarre that they want me to kiss their babies!
That is chilling, says Fidel. It isn’t as if our people
are ignorant of witch burnings
and the Inquisition. Even if they haven’t studied
Reservations in El Norte and
Indian boarding schools.
But cheer up. Who could have imagined
what the world is really like
when we were children?
We’re old now, but in spite of all we learned,
so much of it dreadful and scary, even
petrifying,
we gave Life
our best shot.
Perfection will have
to wait for the next incarnation.
And I mean of the world, not just us.