1
From stipend and yew tree
to
field ditch and oak shade
he
went out among the labourers
of
farm and mill,
even
back to the sacred yard.
Him
of all people
left
with no fixed address,
a
hungry candidate,
not
for sainthood
that
was lost with his waywardness
from
a life lived in Alban’s town,
but
his preaching debunking
the
proscribed chanting
for
the common tongue.
2
Priest
of the thorny hedge,
lectern
deserter,
his
straight and narrow
was
cutting as the plough
to
level rich earth,
point
to its yield
the
brethren’s daily grind,
depleted
ranks
thanks
to the plague.
Now
another body-blow
having
tax served on those
born
into servitude,
a
tax high as the skylark
with
its distant hover.
3
The
guile of the man
was
what got to the lords and lawyers
and
the heavy hand of Canterbury.
Nothing
was too much for him,
horseman
or on foot,
he
saw no difference
between
the man on the reins
and
the man at the roadside.
Yet
the clerics pronounced:
“No
ear shall hear him”.
But
short-lived at each parish ground,
choosing
passages from his well-thumbed bible
he
spoke against the measured order
of
what the clerics kept in mind.
4
The
question of tax came back to haunt him
as
did Wycliffe and Langland,
fellow-travellers
for his realm of parity.
At
times, time to think behind bars,
and
then London was up for grabs,
John
Ball was the talk of the town.
Blackheath
and revolt: him and Tyler.
There
was the weight of expectation,
a
daunting prospect. Nonetheless,
he
was in the thick of it.
But
he had his time and it went
like
stubble in a cornfield laid bare,
a
thinned-out recognition of theirs,
what
the harvest of wants had been.
G. F. Phillips
