What do you do with a broken priest?
Feed him to the populace,
Never enough for a perfect feast,
Never for surfeited success,
But the crowd is hungry. Meat is rare,
Entertainment is anywhere.
Deserves what he gets, the broken priest,
The chattering mute, the empty bag.
Nothing but scraps, down to the least
Disordered ort on the fleeing hag.
Tell it at night, and make it scan,
Delicate rhyme for a damaged man.
Phoebus in his coat and tie
Caught the barista’s wandering eye,
And all was won, and love was done,
And love produced an errant son.
And all the world was hot and dry.
A shepherd in a foundered field
Found him a maid and made her yield.
A golden age, by golden rule,
Began its rain, and it was cool,
Its prior mystery concealed.
They called it fable, called it lore,
The days of rain, the age of ore.
And all of those who came behind
Said it been by love designed,
And they were what had been in store.
You start with stocks, or pillories, I forget,
Celery, carrots, adultery, and shame.
Noodles, of course, and breasts or bits of thigh,
Steeped and simmered, exposed and ridiculed
And made to represent healthy choice and sin
And dreams of crepuscular orange and azure strolls.
Have another, you look so thin, you have
Tomato on your forehead—someone’s aim
Was pretty good after all. Have you been thinking
About what your father said? You have to speak
After it’s done, you know: what separates
Us from the lower beasts is chat. And veg,
Plucked from their beds at pleasurable peaks,
Simmered and skimmed and pricey past all pearls.
