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So I am sitting in my daughter's lounge,
In Canterbury, not a million miles away
From the cathedral where a man was slain,
The immensely sainted Tom A Beckett.
Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
No doubt it rocked the country at the time,
But now the place is quite sedate.
There is scaffolding in place to help the renovations
And all so neat and quaint.

The archbishop's safely encapsulated now within,
No fear of knights on kingly quests for him.
The threat he faces though is more insidious.
The erosion of the faith in this sacrilegious world.
And how much sharper than the assassin's sword
The fate of being deemed pointless,
And just ever so slightly silly?

© Richard Strong, August 2010