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The Ballad of Saint Louis, the Unfrocked Cardinal | Poem

 
 

The Ballad of Saint Louis, the Unfrocked Cardinal


 
Subway Louis hit Las Vegas

Already enamored, reeking of 

Frottage and Corday's Fromage Impiens, 

His favorite since the Archbishop of 

Camembert remitted all dull sins but 

Held to higher ordures those of his 

Acolytes whose limnal bots had 

Not yet maggotized to 

Gourmandry, burrowing slushily into 

The Eucharistic corpus: it takes a 

Dead Waferer to breed the bait for 

Loaves and fishes, they that sinketh 

When strewn breadcast and they that 

Merely stinketh tridiurnally. 
 
 

But Sainted Louis of the 

False bottoms, clad in mawkish 

Velveteen doubloons and foolardry, 

Would soon be embaizened across 

The felty sky, another manner for the 

Gutted year when nothing came of numbers 

And the wasted seed of horologic wizards. 

Poor old Dollar Louis never read 

The signs, only saw the symbols 

Ranked in chippish stacks, walked in 

High headed and low-lettered, unaware 

Of his twin-strikeout halo and 

Blissfully innocent of the forty-story mound 

From which El Dinero loosed the screamer pitch

That drained the pot metal from his knees, 

Leaving him permanently balky 

At the Canon's bedside 

And a dead pigeon 

In the genuflects. 


- David Mitchell
 

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