This morning I attended Mass at St Catherine’s Dominican Church, said by Fr Tumelty of Dromalane. Yesterday I got Mass in Notre Dame, Paris and the day before at Sacre Coeur, Montmartre. Congregations dwindle everywhere.
Our poem today relects on Mass in days long ago in Lislea. Former Abbey teacher Hugh Murphy was an illustrious local poet.
An Image
I remember them standing
On a Sunday morning
Shifting their feet
On the stone yard
Each the master
Of his own authority
Heads pinioned
In speech
Coats pulled tight
Around the waist,
Decked out in caricature
To honour the mystery
Once a week
With the paper waiting
In the rusty van
To be bought and carried
Home
For their Sunday feast of idleness.
The headlines read
In awkward silence
In the first moment
Of uncertainty
When the intellectual burden
Was thrust in caroused hand;
And they stand, definite,
Tomorrow unquestioned
In their sense of purpose
A commonplace
As sure as market day
Or the threshing meet.
Each frozen in my memory
About to turn
Or take a step
Quick-set in their certainty.
All gone
But for the fragile image.
Lislea graveyard
In its hasty greed
Has gulped their wandering feet.