‘Down with Beauty! Long Live Death!’

Two gods share a single breath.

Their warriors can all agree

on how to circumscribe the free

and are themselves in turn confined

by being of the one small mind.

A Muslim and a Catholic phrase

may equally distress our days;

the latter from the Spanish war,

the former sure the hip’s a whore.

‘Down with Beauty! Down with Life!’

All throats are naked to the knife.

As holy men sweep up the dead

their two gods shake a single head.