|
|
Article: Ideology.(Poem)
- Article from:
- Arena Magazine
- Article date:
- August 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Arena Printing and Publications Pty. Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Ideology
James Joyce abhorred all those big words,
all those `isms',
except perhaps for schism and prism,
nice and short,
denoting fracture and refraction,
"exile, silence and cunning".
First we enjoyed Imperialism:
Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian,
Greek, Roman, Carolingian.
From among these last flowered Catholicism,
the Church Militant
and the Holy Roman Empire,
an ideology preying upon souls and death,
spawning Dominican judiciaries
as clement as Vlad the Impaler,
and Jesuits who plied a trade in slaves,
competing with the Popes for ingots of silver and gold.
Things did not much improve with the advent of ...