German, city of Augsburg, c. 1550-1560

Whatever prince commissioned this fancy faucet
was sick of Luther and Melanchthon and austere Calvin,
the relentless pressure of salvation-by-faith-not-works,

just as he'd long ago wearied of the local Catholics,
so corrupt, so expensive, so insufferably smug.

He ordered this pagan tap fashioned from bronze,
a couple of wide-eyed grotesque refugees escaped
from a manuscript's margin or cathedral's lofty gutter: