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[ar:Martin Shaw] |
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[ti.Martin Shaw - Diary Of A Church Mouse by John Betjeman. Bach - Sleepers Awake (excerpt)] |
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[a1:Words For You] |
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Here among long-discarded cassocks, |
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Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, |
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Here where the Vicar never looks |
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I nibble through old service books. |
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Lean and alone I spend my days |
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Behind this Church of England baize. |
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I share my dark forgotten room |
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With two oil-lamps and half a broom. |
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The cleaner never bothers me, |
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So here I eat my frugal tea. |
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My bread is sawdust mixed with straw; |
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My jam is polish for the floor. |
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Christmas and Easter may be feasts |
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For congregations and for priests, |
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And so may Whitsun. All the same, |
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They do not fill my meagre frame. |
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For me the only feast at all |
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Is Autumn's Harvest Festival, |
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When I can satisfy my want |
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With ears of corn around the font. |
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I climb the eagle's brazen head |
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To burrow through a loaf of bread. |
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I scramble up the pulpit stair |
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And gnaw the marrows hanging there. |
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It is enjoyable to taste |
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These items ere they go to waste, |
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But how annoying when one finds |
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That other mice with pagan minds |
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Come into church my food to share |
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Who have no proper business there. |
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Two field mice who have no desire |
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To be baptized, invade the choir. |
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A large and most unfriendly rat |
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Comes in to see what we are at. |
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He says he thinks there is no God |
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And yet he comes...it's rather odd. |
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This year he stole a sheaf of wheat |
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(It screened our special preacher's seat), |
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And prosperous mice from fields away |
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Come in to hear the organ play, |
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And under cover of its notes |
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Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats. |
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A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I |
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Am too papistical, and High, |
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Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong |
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To munch through Harvest Evensong, |
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While I, who starve the whole year through, |
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Must share my food with rodents who |
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Except at this time of the year |
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Not once inside the church appear. |
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Within the human world I know |
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Such goings-on could not be so, |
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For human beings only do |
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What their religion tells them to. |
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They read the Bible every day |
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And always, night and morning, pray, |
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And just like me, the good church mouse, |
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Worship each week in God's own house, |
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But all the same it's strange to me |
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How very full the church can be |
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With people I don't see at all |
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Except at Harvest Festival. |
