Desdichado
—This is the heir; come let us kill him.
—Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved?
Christ walks the world again, His lute upon His back,
His red robe rent to tatters, His riches gone to rack,
The wind that wakes the morning blows His hair about His face,
His hands and feet are ragged with the ragged briar’s embrace,
For the hunt is up behind Him and His sword is at His side,…
Christ the bonny outlaw walks the whole world wide,
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me,
Lie among the bracken and break the barley bread?
We will see new suns arise in golden, far-off skies,
For the Son of God and Woman hath not where to lay His head.”
Christ walks the world again, a prince of fairy-tale,
He roams, a rascal fiddler, over mountain and down dale,
Cast forth to seek His fortune in a bitter world and grim,
For the stepsons of His Father’s house would steal His bride from Him;
They have weirded Him to wander till He bring within His hands
The water of eternal youth from black-enchanted lands,
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me,
Or sleep on silken cushions in the bower of wicked men?
For if we walk together through the wet and windy weather,
When I ride back home triumphant, you will ride beside Me then.”
Christ walks the world again, new-bound on high emprise,
With music in His golden mouth and laughter in His eyes;
The primrose springs before Him as He treads the dusty way,
His singer’s crown of thorns has burst in blossom like the may,
He heedeth not the morrow and He never looks behind,
Singing: “Glory to the open skies and peace to all mankind.”
Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me?
Was never man lived longer for the hoarding of his breath;
Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain . . .
If we perish in the seeking . . . why, how small a thing is death!”
—Dorothy Sayers
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4 Responses
Thank you so much for the poetry — I’ve been moved to tears every day.
Mark, while your hemisphere were peacefully sleeping, the media reported that top Pentagon officials threatened Pope Leo with some sort of Avignon captivity for dissing Trump’s wars: https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/the-pentagon-threatened-pope-leo
Leo seems a courageous, no-nonsense fellow there is always the risk of pressure from threats subconsciously influencing a Pontiff. (E.g., who knows how Henry VIII’s annulment petition might have fared had Catherine of Aragon’s uncle not had his troops occupying Rome at the time the Pope received it. The universities of Sorbonne, Padua and Bologna, safe on the Continent beyond the reach of Thomas Cromwell’s long arm, agreed that “do not marry your brother’s widow” could well mean one should not marry one’s brother’s widow, so who knows how Clement VII might have ruled had he considered the question without undue influence).
If only there were some high-ranking Catholic within the Trump Administration who could speak against this? But Vice-President Vance, who had nothing much else on his agenda during this boring week, is away in Budapest urging Hungarians not to vote the way their fellow Europeans want them to, i.e. against Fidesz (because that would be “foreign interference”, you see). “Urban aut Orbán”… JD has made his choice.
Gets even weirder… the threat-issuer, Elbridge Colby (son of former CIA director William Colby) is himself Catholic.
Thirty years ago this might have just meant he reminisced about his beloved rosary beads and baseball team, Biden- or Trudeau-style, but these days it could well mean he belongs so some far-right DC-based catechumenate who regularly flog themselves with knouts.
Another of that odd breed, Gladden Pappin, has recently put forward his concept of a plan for the Pope anointing Melania as Catholic Queen of America. I do wonder though if Mr Pappin will accept this if the Pontiff signs the relevant decree under military duress. Didn’t the Chinese Communists try to appoint some random Tibetan loyalist as their own preferred Dalai Lama but then found no Buddhists would follow him?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/hungary-maga-orban-gladden-pappin-trump/686652/
Correction, Elbridge [*] Colby was grandson not son of William Colby.
[* what, named after a Black Panther? or the creator of the gerrymander?]
Seems like True Devout Catholics are really getting in touch with the inner Ian Paisley here, standing firm against That Man of Sin which enthroneth himself at Rome. They denounce you, antichrist! To the face! https://x.com/malmesburyman/status/2042024844158505452
I vote that the first war-is-hell movie they make about about Iran 2026 be titled ‘SAVING PRIVATE JUDGMENT’.