| "Ominous
Decade" Carol Hamilton |
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[Listen to a reading of this poem.] (Chapter title by Robert Hughes) So the Catalans did it again, picked up some tattered slogans shredded off billboards advertising the last battle, pieced them into a new fury, made another bout of self-flagellation. These lusts for martyrdom are like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, take on a life that will not answer to us anymore. Would you not think that we, the creators of these self-willed destroyers, would try to remember where we put the OFF switch? ***
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History is a dreary tale, but around the fire we listen, wide-eyed, and the wandering teller knows when to cut it off so that we have our happy ending. Saint Eulalia, Barcelona's patroness, who over the centuries lost all but her head, itself toppled, was rebuilt from photos taken in 1851. Even in stone, the saints are martyred, then set up again like bowling pins, and we watch it all as at the cinema, want to call out to ourselves up there on the screen: Watch out! Watch out! But we know the heroine, who should know better than to take that shortcut through the dark alley, cannot hear us. She may walk fast, stiletto heels aclick on pavement. We see it 
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