Classic Poem

Tough traveller with your Celtic view
of Christ more as man than god,
rough, bearded and trousered,
did they scoff at you in Rome
when you found the centre of your world

soft, cruel, rotten and doomed
and told them so? Jewelled
reliquaries already in the churches
whilst the togaed or tattered mob
howled for blood over the arches

of the Colosseum. So you left the city
to the cleansing Goths and went
your way, arguing your humane sign
of man's responsibility, denying
the equality of evil, original sin,

to towered Jerusalem, to be
condemned at shining Ephesus
and ruined Carthage, though no doctrine
of yours ever presumed to order
your clear sight of man's condition.

Celtic monk who never took holy
orders, I, a heretic
in every faith I've been tempted by,
fifteen centuries after your stand
now greet you and your heresy.

Tough traveller with your Celtic view
of Christ more as man than god,
rough, bearded and trousered,
did they scoff at you in Rome
when you found the centre of your world

soft, cruel, rotten and doomed
and told them so? Jewelled
reliquaries already in the churches
whilst the togaed or tattered mob
howled for blood over the arches

of the Colosseum. So you left the city
to the cleansing Goths and went
your way, arguing your humane sign
of man's responsibility, denying
the equality of evil, original sin,

to towered Jerusalem, to be
condemned at shining Ephesus
and ruined Carthage, though no doctrine
of yours ever presumed to order
your clear sight of man's condition.

Celtic monk who never took holy
orders, I, a heretic
in every faith I've been tempted by,
fifteen centuries after your stand
now greet you and your heresy.