Four lines and about twenty words are enough to make a solemn ritual look faintly absurd. In "Vicar," Dave Bonta gives the floor to a clergyman, and what he confesses is not a dramatic sin but something smaller and more recognisable: he is enjoying himself. "Proud of my pretty hands," he begins, and the central idea is already in place. A sacred office can be, for the person holding it, partly a matter of vanity and performance.
Start with that first line. We might expect a vicar to be proud of his faith, his congregation or his service, but he is proud of his hands, and "pretty" ones at that. The adjective belongs to compliments and picture books rather than pastoral duty. These are soft, admired hands, not hands that do hard work. They are also the hands that bless, hold, gesture and hand things over, so the vanity is tied directly to the ceremony. The poem needs no commentary on this. The speaker simply says it, with no sign of shame.
The second line sharpens the joke. "I play a wise man" turns the vicar into an actor, and the verb "play" carries a hint of childishness, as in dressing up. Wisdom becomes a costume, not something he possesses. Pride and wisdom also sit awkwardly side by side. Judging by the poem's tone, the speaker knows this, which is why the confession feels honest rather than cynical. There may even be a faint echo of the biblical wise men, though the poem never says so. The sound of the opening lines reinforces the preening. "Proud," "pretty" and "play" all begin with the same popping *p*, a small lip-smacking pleasure in the speaker's own self-regard.
Line three tells us what the performance is for. The words "husband" and "wife" suggest a wedding, though the poem never uses the word. The phrase "give husband to wife" is a deliberate twist on the familiar idea of giving a bride away. Here the two people are reduced to roles, "husband" and "wife," with no names, no faces and no feelings recorded. The verb "give" is plain and almost shop-like, as if the vicar were passing goods across a counter. The lack of punctuation matters here too. "I play a wise man give husband to wife" runs on without a pause, so playing and giving become a single smooth gesture, a routine rather than a moment of awe. The long *i* sounds in "my," "wise," "wife" and "my" create a loose chime across the lines, nearly a rhyme with "wise" and "wife," that links the show of wisdom with the handing over of a spouse. Otherwise there is no rhyme and no regular metre. The first three lines are short, five or six syllables each, and the poem speaks in a low, conversational voice.
The final line is longer and ends in anticlimax: "with my two copies of a book." Notice what is missing. It is not "the Bible" or "the holy book" but just "a book," as flat as a library loan. The odd detail of "two copies" turns the book into equipment, something counted out like props. Perhaps one is for each partner, perhaps one is a spare, but the poem does not say, and the vagueness helps the deflation. The stress falls on "book," and there is no full stop, no amen and no blessing. The ceremony trails off into an object. We can also infer that the pretty hands are holding those books, so the opening vanity and the closing prop quietly meet.
What makes the poem significant is how much it leaves out. God is absent, the couple's emotions are absent, and even the church building is absent. All that remains is a man, his hands, his role and his props. The title does a great deal of the work, since it is the only place the speaker's job is named, as if the label were another costume. Because the speaker mocks himself rather than an outsider, the poem feels humane rather than savage. It invites us to smile and then to wonder where we "play a wise man" ourselves, whenever we take on a role and enjoy how we look in it.