The Sin-eater: A Breviary

Argyle eased the warm loaf right and left

and downed swift gulps of beer and venial sin

then lit into the bread now leavened with

the corpse's cardinal mischiefs, then he said

"Six pence, I'm sorry." And the widow paid him.

So opens the unsanctioned priesthood of The Sin-eater: A Breviary—Thomas Lynch's collection of two dozen, twenty-four line poems—a book of hours in the odd life and times of Argyle, the sin-eater. Celtic and druidic, scapegoat and outlier, a fixture in the funerary landscap...