Leaning this way, charismatically in profile like someone in re/pose for immortality, the false vermillion cardinal’s mantle that covers you devours in multiple harmonies the serene abstract space where you dwell.

Everything rouses the serenity of mystical proportion.

I admire the way that you let the crosier/staff rest pastorally on your shoulder, just like a toy gun, and notice the unusual narrow purple lappet emphatically unfolding over your other shoulder from where the white tip of your alb carelessly peeks.

You have been called the “Red bishop”, a mitred boy staring somewhere into the infinity of empty space. You have never looked at me. I have never looked into your eyes since you rose from the hidden geometry to become silently eternal.

I wanted you to be good, fraternal and fair. But, in your innocence, you may perhaps be unaware that on the immaculate white of the mitre – which on you is more like an ornament than an attribute of power – a symbol of the bonfires of the Inquisition has been embroidered in gold, almost invisibly.

 

Jorge Pinheiro
S. Pedro do Estoril, 11/07/2012