El Greco: Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple - 1600, by Mark Wilson

Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple, by El Greco (Spain, b. Crete) 1600

El Greco: Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple - 1600 

Pirouetting on one leg, whip prehensile
above his bladed head, so he exerts 
command on the painting’s axis. Mid-
dance, he fixates a gavotte of righteous 
anger, with both eyes fixed on his purposed

task-at-hand. Traders & money-changers 
cascade shock & resentment all around 
him, as tables clatter to auteur El Greco’s 
mise-en-scène. Young men stoop in vain 
to scramble up chattels & spilt coinage 

in a divinely-organised vortex of pigeon-
squawking & metallic windfall. Torsos 
twist with a capitalist anguish; & old 
bald pates confer with a diminished, 
an ever-diminishing authority.

Only the serving girl, emerging from
beneath the Eastern tympanum, echoes
the messianic arabesque & posture.
Like him she’s energy’s altar-piece, 
emanating contemplation & labour

whilst intently studying a broken
nail on her right index-finger.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson has previously published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is also the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain and Le Zaporogue.