The Spanish Dead

A grassy gully just west of Granada

With the breeze in the pines

And a spring bubbling close by;

Lorca hides under the ground where he was shot,

Side by side with a one-legged schoolteacher

And two trade unionists.


In the Convent of the Royal Discalced Carmelites

It lies, the tiny linen-wrapped corpse of a baby,

Labelled as one of the innocents

Liquidated by Herod.


Seven thousand bones and wisps of hair

In Philip II’s Escorial,

Twelve skeletons and forty-four skulls.

The black spider’s insurance policy

That did not keep his Armada from sinking.


Day by day on his deathbed

Generalissimo Franco looks across

At St Teresa’s desiccated forearm

Brought to his bedside,

Praying for mercy and relief.

.
Bodies,bodies,hundreds of thousands

Of bodies in the ground,

People whose religion

Was life, the light, the smell of bread,

A well-timed joke.