Clément Pujol de Guastavino, Spanish
“It Looks Like They’re Out of the Steak Tacos Today, Your Highness. Is Chicken Okay?,” Date Unknown
Oil on panel
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (if truncated, can be read in full for free on Fridays), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Spanish Wikipedia page (Google translated if necessary).
/// Guastavino shows The Sultan and
the Messenger reading firsthand.
If the message is panned,
by the sultan’s command,
the poor messenger might be “unmanned.”
/// Sultan, wearing his best plume aigrette,
seems attentive, but not yet upset.
The scroll tells of a debt
long unpaid with a threat
not to finish the mosque’s minaret.
/// Minarets are the tall towers where
all the faithful can hear calls to prayer.
Architect’s ultimatum
was delivered verbatim,
now the messenger’s told to turn slayer.
/// Clément’s Sultan is one of that ilk.
Wealthy people who, poor people, bilk.
He lives by the sword;
that’s how he can afford
fifty kaftans of fine Chinese silk.
/// The mosque builder, despite being skilled,
wrongly thought that the rich can be billed.
Naiveté— plus he lacked
any requisite tact
to avoid being painful killed.
/// Someone else got the tower completed;
(someone else whom the great sultan cheated).
Brutes who wield lethal power
can make moral men cower,
and ensure justice never gets meted.