The Basilica in Rome, a sunny day, with thousands
Waiting to enter the massive doors of church
And center. I came, too, having been raised in its
Spherical domain, but now long without the
Stone walls to contain me. I arrived with daughter
And friend, not to pay homage, but to see,
To feel, to know why, again, I raged for justice
Inside a gilded castle. The only justice with eyes.
The floors were inlaid with gold, gold statues
Loomed over us, brass candle holders
At every altar. Polished wood confessional booths
Pushed up against thousand-year-old walls
Where penitents and priests commune in common
With sin. Many prayed, whispering, solemn, at awe.
I seethed—blood like magma vomits of earth,
Dense dark of past irreconciled.
It was a tomb for me, for bitter-bone history that sculptured
My bones. I did not feel the sacred, but the dead,
The screams, the eyeless songs,
The people sacrificed for the gold that now
Emblazoned this coffin, watered by tears of lead,
Greeted by guttural laughs,
Lined with charred flesh and charred poems.