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LISBON’S LOST ANGELS

Michael S. Morris

... it was a decaying place
ruled by a king who sired
bastard sons
by comely nuns
until he lost his mind

Lisbon was dying...

It was
the Los Angeles of the past
and all at once at bay
it was two hundred thirty nine years ago
nine-thirty
All Saint’s Day...

when the morning streets began to heave
and toss
darkening the city under a Raven cloud
of burling dust

Church bells��clanged��themselves
as tho Mystified��at first

until they fell out of their towers

Freemen Sedgewards
As far away as Scotland felt
the tremors��move the earth

Fires broke out
Some doused by the tidal wave
which reared and crashed

drowning survivors who had not, luckily,
been burned��or crushed

the waters receded as the looters came
plundering anything worth saving
killing anyone who interfered

Voltaire, overwhelmed
wrote of the horror

“What a wretched gamble
is the game of human life –
why not in the midst

of an uninhabited desert?
Why Lisbon engulfed
while, Paris, no less
wicked��dances?”

Burning, Lisbon in 1755,
was the Los Angeles of its day –
a decaying place –
made rich by trade...



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