I imagine the monk Martin in his cell,
around the hour they clink the evening bell:
he flickers through The Canterbury Tales,
stops at the wenching Pardoner sloshed with ale,
who flogs ironic relics, ‘hoot’ from Rome,
wayside rags and pebbles, an old pig-bone
which, swilled in a well, will heal your herd,
and make your livestock multiply a third.
Some pillow-case, he says, is Mary’s veil;
he has, he says, a square of Peter’s sail;
he leaves the poorest widows in despair;
the dead can go scrump fruit, for all he’ll care.
Mad Luther hurls his fist down with a boom:
all Europe’s rocked foundation shakes the room.

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