The Pilgrim Road 6 & 7 Poem by David McLansky

The Pilgrim Road 6 & 7



The Hasty Departure (6)

The Prioress learned of Ann's harsh labor,
Heard of the child with much disfavor;
And then she learned this babe had played
Our Sovereign Lord upon the stage;
Hastily she gathered round
The troop of actors drunken found
And bid them quickly be on their way
Before the sun rose on that day;
She asked the leader of the band,
A coarse, dishonest sort of man
To take with them the little babe;
To make sure haste, be gone away;
And with the babe the still sore mother
Lest the town folk soon discover
The babe they called by name of Christ
Was a child of sin and vice;
And so when Phoebus' golden crown
Rose in the east to His renown,
The Mummers carts rolled on the road,
Encumbered by two more in their load.
The Mummer chief with a coin of gold
That this scandal not be told;
He looked at Ann sitting on his bench
And thought the girl a comely wench
As she nursed her sleeping child
The rutted road shaking them the while.



Twenty Years (7)

Twenty years has come and gone,
Twenty summers of blazing dawn,
Twenty years of blowing wheat
Of buzzing bee combs honey sweet;
Twenty years of harvest labor
Where God had shown his bonded favor;
Twenty years of tending vines,
Twenty years of making wine;
Twenty years of Winter blasts,
Where Nuns bent coldly to their tasks;
Twenty years of prayers to heaven,
Of sins confessed, of souls sore shriven;
Twenty years of time gone by,
A falcon circles in the sky.

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