Auto-de-fe

For weeks the mouse scurried across
above his office ceiling late at night
as he tried to compose his satirical witticisms.
He cursed it and repeatedly warned it
to reform its ways or else.
Poison or just the better mousetrap
was too good for it.

It and its brethren must be taught a lesson.
Instead he trapped the mouse alive and
withheld food to extract an abjuration.
The torture not succeeding,
he kept it until Sunday morning
when he would burn
the pile of branches next to the house
from the tree taken down by the
fierce windstorm of the prior week.

Once the pyre began to burn ferociously,
he squirted the mouse with the accelerant
and threw it into the hottest spot.
The mouse, now thoroughly ignited,
darted across the nearby patio and
sought its nest in the ceiling
right above the man’s desk.


© Sherman K. Poultney 25 January 2006


Auto-de-fe. An auto de fe is literally a “judicial sentence or act of faith,” usually ending with the public burning of heretics. In June of 1680, the largest auto de fe of the Spanish Inquisition took place.

written after the Billy Collins reading at New Canaan Library 24 Jan 2006