Canterbury Tales Revisited

I cannot imagine now what it
would have been like – and I cannot
begin to dream of whom or how
they might have seemed today.

Though I know their social station as it
was, can guess a rough outline of every
face, how they spake and dressed,
it’s not to say I’d know the same.

Who is a Knight today? Would he
be a stately man or an unenviable
anachronism? Or a Reeve? Millers
are likely still the same as are men

of Law – and inebriated Cooks. Clerks,
Squires, Franklins and Merchant men
still bore one silly as do men of Books;
Manciples and provisions go hand in

hand, Physicians likely still cure an ill,
Priests, Monks, Parsons, Prioresses
and Nuns are still habitually dressed.
Summoners and Pardoners are harder

to come by while a jolly Wife of Bath
is no great feat to imagine. But to see
them all together at a table laden here
within the Inn telling tales to entertain

each other, to hear their stories loud
and clear with vast quantities of wine
and beer imbibed to ease their saddle
sores would please me famously.

I would that they all came and stayed
again right here when on their wended
way to view the martyr’s tomb
in far off Canterbury.
© 1 May 2007, I.D. Carswell