There are no ghosts in Catholic Spain.
What, none?
None! Nil!
It runs uphill against the grain of their religion.
In any region you might go
The rain in Spain falls on a ghostless plain.
On jaunts about Castille you’ll find it so:
No haunts!
Those castles, ruined, empty-jawed, where gaunts
In England’s guilt-prone nights might sprout,
In Spain are only filled with cat-footfalls of rain.
The papal architects have planned them out.
No ghosts are manufactured to weep here
Through doleful month or suffering year.
The dead, the good/bad church’s dead?
(Learn it well.)
Jump straight to heaven! Bang!
Or:
Go to hell!
No Loitering, says Mother Church.
No reconnoitering on Earth’s front porch.
Up you go: Angel’s wings!
Down you go: Torch!
No ectoplasm whispering cold mirrors: “Alas!”
Pausing to admire
Its skull-face in the glass.
Up you jump: Cherub’s breath!
Down you fall: Fire!
Not here: O, Lazarus, quit tomb, come forth!
He’s long since blown north
On pagan winds toward colder climes.
Westminster’s chimes do beckon him
To reckon with pale Protestants who boast
No English moat lacks skeletons,
Each tower? gives midnight snacks to ghost.
Gah, let the fools maunder!
Let their cold bods wander,
Lost in their own sleep,
Raking the rats awake and awash in the wainscot,
Making the old moldy flesh of lost London cold-creep,
Doubtful of heaven, uncertain of flames.
Let Hamlet’s sire dropkick lost Yorick’s skull downstairs
In winless games
For what gain?
Better the Catholic hush of soundless rain
Which falls in Spain upon a ghostless plain,
Where only the wind walks battlements
To touch and toll God’s bell.
Again:
Good souls? To heaven!
Bad?
Go to hell.