The Beggars at Sant Felieux

Looking into the sun,

my own little separatist movement

on stone bridge crossing to medieval side

man with plastic cup, not asking, simply fact.

At the door of the cathedral, experiments:

porto, puerta--his cup loose with Euro coins, odd bald

headed men on obverse faces--coppery,

precious, in the high stone building full of saints

bound and abused in life-sized carvings of

eternal suffering, pricked

with many grievous arrows,

confounded but purified for 700 years,

officially worse-off than the crone

yesterday outside la Sagrada Familia

vitally invested in asserting

that she is good--bon, buon, bueno...

the hefty clank

of metal on her blessed palm

interrupting my idle gazing at Spanish girls

with lean thighs wearing only men's shirts,

belted, over erotic heels.