Lorca’s blood wedding bleeding 
Into lemon-tree-soil
Reminds me of nothing more than the toil, toil, toil
Of life in Al-Andalus.
Priests chanting their rosary
Like it was El Maleh Rachamim
Or the Mourner’s Kaddish (which it probably was, if the priest
Was a Jewish Converso, who changed his religion
To save his life or, maybe, the life of his children). The Moriscos (ex-Muslim Moors), as usual, prayed louder,
Than did the Goths (Christian Spanish), They never coughed,
But Moriscos touched the head-covering they did not wear.
What they did on Fridays was only the business
Of the Inquisition.
Many Moriscos fled to Morocco, Lebanon.
To the centres of the Islamic world: Damascus, Baghdad.
Now nobody wants anything
To do with these ‘torturers
Of children and women-folk‘.
But nearly 450 years after the surrender on January 2, 1492
Of the Emirate of Granada to the Christian Castillian army
Franco’s Moroccan units committed numerous atrocities
In many Spanish cities, including Toledo
Murdering men, women and children
So helping to defeat the Spanish, Socialist Republic,
Allying Spain with Italian Fascists and German Nazis.
Well, I just like a drink now and again:
Wine, brandy, what you will,
I wonder what the people in the future
Will think of all this?