The quacksalver’s quicksilver cure--
slathering a salt salve or quaffing mercury--
might sound like quatsch, a bad wine
of qually quality, but remember a time
when faith aligned with alchemy,
before the querical became the enemy
of the clerical, the quisquous nature
of faith mirrored that viscous commodity;
when quiddities were not quisby oddities
and to quop and quob before mysteries
did not portend holy querimony
but recognition of the quintessence divine.
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