To Francis
By Abigail Carroll - Winooski, Vermont, USA - 27 August 2015
That you proposed a pact with a wolf
should make me think you
mad. You were so obsessed with peace
it struck you blind. Why not die
halting the Crusades, let the sultan spill
your blood (some say you left
for Egypt with just that in mind). It would
have been a hero’s end --
you would have died a martyr’s death.
Instead, you risked it all
on a howling dog, wild with hunger, not
very fond of men. The town
declared war. Gubbio was up in arms,
but leave it to you, my friend,
you and your charmingly ludicrous truce:
first you rebuked the brute, then
tendered a pledge (in Italian, no less --
not exactly its mother tongue!)
It should have laughed, slaughtered you
on spot, but, stayed by your voice,
happily gave in, agreed to live on gifts
of meat and cause no undue
harm -- they say it raised its paw to seal
the deal. I’d call this a tale,
the kind men spin when they want the pope
to make a man a saint, but how
to explain the bones of a wolf unearthed
in the Gubbio chapel’s crypt?