Thanks, Evie!

A limpid piece of poetry, free-flowing but muscular. Expertly turned. There is a real feel of multi-cultural Britain.

As an 'insider', I confess to being rather worried about 'the wafer of State' and am interested in how the Established Church appears from afar. The atmosphere in the poem, however, is one suffused with the incense of Catholicism and that I find pleasing. In Britain, a fierce ongoing debate exists between the Anglo-Catholic wing of the C of E and the Roman Catholic churches. There is a hair's breadth between them and a gulf as wide as the Atlantic. It all turns upon who, exactly, is admitted to the Lord's table in an RC church. I just can't bring myself to believe that Jesus Christ would have made this arbitrary distinction.