I've now published my epic verse-novel God The Banana. It's available in print on Amazon & on Kindle at http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-The-Banana-Tim-Ellis/dp/150317428X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1417545504&sr=1-2

I posted the first two of the 437-sonnet story here a few weeks ago.  This is how it continues:

 

Many thousand sticks of incense smoulder

blueing the gloomy hall within this building:

many thousand threads of vapour bending

wispily into the roof vaults out of holders

which smoke before a hundred pagan altars.

A cankerous crust of ash and dust and mildew

mottles myriad local gods which moulder

upon stone plinths.  Slivers of sunlight filter

through the cerulean cloud and glint on marble

angels and cherubs overlooking older

divinities,  from a rood screen depicting a garbled

tableau of Paradise.  A throng of worshippers share

faith between Faiths,  and bearded shamans rub shoulders

amicably with the clergy of Moshadir.

 

 

“As we enter look at the architrave...

…the saints are eating bananas,  the fruit of Amanga.”

The tour guide’s clients look but they don’t linger,

just shuffle through the portal to the nave

where pigeons coo in the rafters. They squint through dinge

and gagging fug of incense.  Harrumphs and coughs

are lost in the vast cathedral,  dim as a cave

after the plaza.  Some pious tourists cringe,

discerning pagan idols;  they wrinkle noses,

look down at the floor and find it paved

with marble tombstones stained by trampled roses,

Coca-Cola,  bananas,  oranges and dates:

the names of colonial overlords engraved

on Christian memorials blotched by the secular state.

 

 

The tour guide waves an umbrella and starts his talk,

enthusing that this Holy City’s lucky

so many faiths can co-exist:  these mucky

idols daubed with dyes and powdered chalk

are testament to indulgent native priests.

“This church at times is like a market hall...

…street-traders set up pitches here and hawk

their wares as offerings to the mythic beasts...

…even local rum is made libation.

Here is Graal,  with head and neck of a stork,

and this...the phallic God of Procreation:

Imti Mentoo with his manhood…how do you say?...cocked?”

Some younger tourists snigger, others gawk.

The eldest and most staid seem somewhat shocked...

 

 

...to find such things revered inside a church.

A grey-haired lady asks how,  in this town

where earthquake shattered monasteries abound,

this building’s ridden each new seismic lurch.

“Maybe it’s that Imti Mentoo god

that props it up!”  a cheeky backpacker smirks.

The guide raps on a pillar:  marble,  smirched

by greasy fingers...but no...it’s odd:

a hollow wooden sound ascends to the rafters.

A dollop of plop descends from a pigeon perch.

The tour guide,  dabbing his head,  narrates above laughter

that a 17th century governor,  Gonzalez-Bremmer,

concluded after several years’  research

that timber columns best absorb earth tremors.

 

 

To someone who is quietly watching them

this would be funny in more ways than one,

were he inclined to bear a sense of fun

beside the weight that’s crushing him,  but then

there is no person in the world who’s stronger.

He’s checked this group already for the man

he’s looking for,  inspecting all the men

who come in here,  prepared to wait much longer.

The one he seeks has family history

carved in the floor - those names would see a “den

of thieves” in this church - they’d founded it to be

their symbol of power;  a holy imperial palace.

The man is known to one and all as “Ben”

- Benjamin Bremmer.  His grandfather dropped the “Gonzalez”.