Canterbury Tale
John Claiborne Isbell
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,”
sings Geoffrey Chaucer. It has likely been
three decades since I read his Middle English,
headache in tow: the Wife of Bath, the Knight,
the Pardoner. Here, conversation’s ball
is traded, as the journey like a stream
freights pilgrims on past English hedge and field
down the broad road to Kent and Canterbury.
There, that lived-in cathedral I would see
on my day’s rounds looms into air. The town
greets fewer pilgrims now, and yet its speech
is full of Chaucer. The American
I was and am, in my high starched wing collar,
spoke Chaucer’s tongue as well. Inside the wall
that girt our school, we scholars all processed
through nave to choir on Sundays. And the stars
that Chaucer knew turned overhead, the planets
still orbited the sun. Come Eastertide,
the sun rose earlier and shone more bright
to herald summer. In my pilgrimage
through language to cathedral, it is true
I was not without precedent. The school
could welcome Chaucer, as the centuries
brought Reformation, Civil War. And yet,
much as a stream persists, so every April,
the rain comes sweet. The winter’s at an end.
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Fliss: Well met, John, and welcome to October! Word-Bird and I are glad to see you in these parts again. And here we are in Canterbury, not a place I’ve visited, but one you know well. I think I recognise the first line of your poem; is it the first line of Chaucer’s prologue to the Tales?
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John: Well met indeed, Fliss and W.-B.! Yes, I spent some years at school in Canterbury and have fond memories of it. You are quite correct, the opening line opens Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales.
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F: Hooray! I thought I recognised it, but I wasn’t sure. I think we looked at the prologue briefly in my sixth-form English Literature class, before moving on to The Merchant’s Tale. I found the language rather difficult to understand; in your poem, is it a similar struggle that gives rise to a headache at line 4?
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J: Yes, Chaucer is a terrible speller! This may be because he was writing in Middle English. I found reading large tracts of him quite headache-inducing, though entertaining to read.
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F: From what I recall, reading the tale proved quite a lengthy translation exercise, before it was possible to engage with the narrative, the themes, and so on. Intense! But as we continue through your poem, the scenery is appreciated, I think. Did you enjoy your Canterbury schooldays, John?
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J: I did indeed! I spent four years at Canterbury in the 1970s. We were known in town as penguins, owing to our black-and-white outfits and our wing collars and ties. Middle English can be read as is, but it requires sustained focus. At least, Chaucer can be read – Gawain and the Green Knight is harder reading, as I recall.
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W.-B.: Penguins! That is pleasant.
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F: Yes, I thought you’d like that, W.-B.! John, I’ve read about Gawain and the Green Knight in my Little History of Poetry book. I’m glad you had a good time at school. And now you’re retracing the pilgrims’ journey in your poem.
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J: Yes! The poem records how, for an American, arriving in Europe brings home the succession of the centuries. My boarding school, The King’s School, Canterbury, was founded in A.D. 597, for instance, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales take place a good eight hundred years later.
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W.-B.: A.D. 597! That is early!
J: Quite so, W.-B. It was an old school already, that later saw the Reformation and the Civil War. The poem is then a sort of meditation about time, being written some three decades after I left the school for Cambridge, an institution founded six centuries later.
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F: The length of time, and also the breadth of time, we think?
J: You’re right! The poem asks what lingers as the centuries go by – a language or a poem can, for instance – and what does not. The seasons linger, and the stars overhead. The cathedral does, and as it happens, so does my old school, in which I wandered being very young, all those years ago.
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F: John, we like a lot about this poem here at WM. It provides something of a flashback to my own schooldays, while also offering some engaging imagery. I particularly like ’conversation’s ball’ in your first stanza; it seems very apt. The stars and planets later on in the poem lend a little magic, I think. Now, the meter… pent?
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J: Confirmed! Unrhymed pentameter for this one. Thanks for enjoying various elements of the poem, Fliss and W.-B. Perhaps it’s time we all took a poetry trip!
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W.-B.: Woo-hoo! Poetry trips are fun!
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F: Oh, we’d love that, John. I’ve thought sometimes about reading more of Chaucer, in between grappling with robots in the day job, of course! And Canterbury does look pleasant.
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J: I’ll start up the WM camper van!
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John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently residing in France with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (April 2025), both available free online. John spent 35 years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more!
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