In my hometown Martin Luther is still king

every spring when they hammer the theses of their students

to the solid doors of the university.

Yours was so thick that they had to order a special nail

from the last remaining blacksmith on the southern coast.

As they pounded it in I had a strange vision

they were hammering your head to the wall.

And the word bled through the meaning of the book.

While the town busied itself as usual serving hot cocoa

at the café across the street, eating cool ice cream in the sunshine

clobbering fish to death in the marketplace and studying

butterflies nailed to the dusty wall at school,

I walked under the tall straight beech trees, the short, stout

fragrant magnolias by that door full of holes and listened

to the hammering of that ancient grotesque ritual

honoring the old Jew-hater Luther who thought he could

change the world by penetrating the word with a nail.

And the world bled through the meaning of the word.