Jake's Flea Market

look at the vagabond
see that his ears are cropped

ask   was it yesterday his feet
were locked in the stocks

ask   was it last week he couldn’t
pull his head nor his hands from the pillory

say   tell me stranger
was it a month ago the good people 
of wittenburg threw offal at you   

smell that he’s putrid

ask   if under the wool of his doublet
the once white linen of his smock is slashed
with dried blood   ask if he was whipped

ask   if for the hours of the night
or if for years of a long dark he was
fettered in the dungeon under job’s castle1

look that his eyes blink against daylight
or that it’s his terrors that blink his eyes   say

to the man who walks the world alone
return with me to the town
i’ll give you a company to walk with
and a regiment to walk with the company


1.	Kloden Castle, about 30 miles from Wittenberg: In the late 16th century it was owned and the home of Jobst Kanne of the noble family of Kanne.