The wandering Jew must needs subsist
on vegetables and scaly fish,
and soon you hear him sadly wish
for a knife-slit, white-bled kosher kid
and the fleshpots of Israel.
It used to be that, once a week,
On Fridays, we could have no meat,
and so we thought it hard to eat
the harvest of the Dunmore fleet,
except, of course, for Salmon.
Saint Peter, on a Jaffan roof,
was shown a sheet of living things
that crept and slid and plopped and slithered,
and sported every kind of hoof,
cavorting in the gloom.
In Ramadan, the muslims fast
from dawn to dusk, and feast at night
on sweetmeats, that sharpened appetite
sweeten all the more. This last
scheme seems a better way to mortify the flesh.
On warm spring evenings, round the town,
the muslims sit in doorways munching,
chatting, laughing, singing, loving
life and company, and smiling at the frowning
faces of their betters.
You may not like their politics
or the small print in the Koran,
but as faiths go, it's not the worst,
and it has the virtue catholic,
that anyone can join.
Still, there's not much use hankering after
that kind of thing, when I'm stuck believing
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
and wouldn't be easy with a monopersonal
mighty indifferent God.
Not to mention His prophet.
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