Cordoba’s Mezquita: Silvered Birch and Sunset Palms

I thought I would hate it.

Before I crossed the Roman-Andalusian bridge still

Spanning the river’s gurgling rush; the guitar’s

Flamenco soothing, reviving, weary feet

Before I passed the Courtyard of Oranges and entered –

The shadowed hall

Mirrored doubled striated palmed arches in red and gold

Rank on rank, columns receding into sunsetting eternity

Receding into eternal Arabic calligraphy

Curling pirouettes in decorated coves.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba,

Or The Mesquita as its known,

In its name an affectionate diminutive …

Yet still my finger can trace the Arabic masjid* on the wall.

Plonk a church inside a mosque … no that could never work

Some kind of garish violation – that’s what I thought

Cultural strangers – incompatibles – just victor’s contemptuous hubris …

That’s all.

But then I had not yet seen the other churches

In every marvellous Spanish city which we saw

Square, squat churches sitting dark and heavy

The inquisition’s calling card

Built with generous floods of conquistador’s gold and blood and bone

Beside the plaza: the auto da fe’s** broad stage …

The square’s the give away – wrong shape for a church

Unless you want to forget the mosque erased …

Sometimes, you don’t even have to do the work,

An earthquake, God’s antidote to human vanity, and it’s gone

A moorish tower might survive to tell the tale

Still standing beside the new fangled Renaissance church now there

The medieval barbarism of the past we’ve left behind

For the brave new world of science, reason and pure race.

But in the Mezquita something happened that could never be

Church rising within the shadowed hall, soaring high above

It’s marbled nave, a choral chorus to the Mesquita’s verse

As church should, rising in impossible stone

Mighty inspired stone trunks, branches embracing above

Framed by windows and waterfalls of light.

Forest within forest

Silvered birch rising amidst the sunset palms

Here in harmony, chorus and verse

The mihrab still lights the way to Mecca

Beyond, and church windows still echo heaven’s call,

In Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and in its celebrated halls.