How is the loan different from the knife? Part 2

Francesco de’ Pazzi, thirty four
Banker, usurer, butcher
	It’s all the same
Leaping at Giuliano de Medici 
On his knees in prayer.
	As in the Dipolieia
	Like the ox waiting for the axe
	Brought to the altar to stoop 
        and eat the grain
	For the priest who strikes with the axe
	Kills the ox and runs.
And so the arc of the blade
Nineteen wounds
Dead before he hit the floor.
There was blood
There had to be.

The Popes messenger 
Shadow in the alleyways 
To Pazzi the conspirator
      Rid us of the Medici monarch
	  He that acts will be loved by the church.

The artist and the knife 
         ‘lo perfido assassin’ 
                    (the treacherous assassin) 
The knife and the darkness
The sweeping blade and then the blood.

Destroy your enemy
His children, woman and future.

The savage humanism of Frederico da Montefeltro
Duke of Urbino
The light of Italy
Humanist and condottiere for the Papacy
Lapdog to the Pazzi
Waiting in vain
For his 600 troops to strike against Medici
The failed coup.

For the Pazzi
Failure, fear loosened in their bowels 
The knife and worse.

Il patriaca Jacopo de' Pazzi ran like a rabbit
Trapped and caught by the neck
Tortured (we won’t speak of that)
Then hanged from the Palazzo della Signoria 
Beside the corpse of Salviati. 
Buried then dug up 
	No rest
Then tossed in a ditch
Dragged through the streets  
Propped up at the door of Palazzo Pazzi
His head a door-knocker. 
Then thrown into the Arno
Children fished him out and hung him from a willow tree, 
Flogged him, then threw him back into the river. 
The gold haired Cherubs 
Of Firenze
Home of the Renaissance
How they loved to play.