The Passion Play Poem by Chris Zachariou

At three in the afternoon
the soldiers killed the poet
but his voice fled
to the Andalusian valleys.

Nobody mourned his death.
Nobody, nobody, nobody.
Only a gypsy and a dwarf
mourned the poet's death today.

The padre does not mourn the poet.
He has wept since the day he sinned
with a child actress in the grand Cathedral;
but the child will come to him no more
and the padre has been crying for years.

In the cemetery the grave digger waits.
Why is the grave digger waiting for a corpse
without a voice? No one in the town knows.

The gypsy and the dwarf whimper.
They are frightened of the man
wearing a black sombrero
and with jackdaw feathers on his lips.
He has come to watch the play
that no one in the town remembers.

In springtime the orange groves
scatter blossom on the poet's grave
and a swarm of sterile butterflies
pour out of the hombre's mouth.

Alfacar is a town on edge.
Who betrayed the poet today?
Nobody in the town knows.
Nobody, nobody, nobody.