El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro

When every soldier had departed

Every townsman, every farmer,

Boabdil, in his moment of despair,

looked back upon Grenada.

The Caliphate's desiderata
Relinquished to the infidel.
The last king left his minaret,
El Zogoybe, "the unfortunate", his sobriquet.
Seven centuries of learning,
The reconquistas undiscerning,
Of the glories brought to Andaluz
By noble Moors, now reduced,
to servitude in fealty to a Christian truce.

The legend well known:
"You cry like a woman for what you could not defend as a man".
Yet the last heir, surrounded by
Catholic contenders;
Only sought the best terms of surrender,
his people's safe passage
In exchange for the keys
to the city's splendor.

And so it began with the kingdom he lost,
The strife and the rift, perpetual cost.
Five centuries of man against man,
beliefs that maintain an unyielding plan.
One based upon choice, the other submission; with neither deigning to acts of contrition.

With Boabdil’s legacy now largely forgotten,
And the garden of Al-Andaluz misbegotten,
We would be wise to cast a look
at Granada's tolerant ideals forsook.