The Castles Of Europe Poem by Kevin Patrick

See the vagrant tourists
pick their pretty postcards
in the giftshop of keeps
with shoddy paraphernalia
and they take their token pictures
from the lofty bastion stalls
or next to the arrow loops
where they smile so freely
in the beautiful fiction
of rebranded history

And yet, there isn't a castle
In the chivalrous map of Europe
That isn't stained in the blood
Of human persecution
From Montségur to Burghausen
And the mighty walls of Whitehall
Were hangings and beheadings
Filled a million banquet halls
In the acne face of history
Where the blood is in the ashler



And you can have a happy day
Where young and saintly jane grey
Was dispatched by royal schemes
But now the family says "say cheese"


And All of yesterday's horrors
Are just todays kitsch mementos