I'm So Happy! I'm So Clappy! I'm So Happy And Clappy And.....

Vigil Mass just anywhere,
loudspeakers squeak and groan
A lady stalks to the lectern
And taps the microphone.

“Your celebrant this evening will be
Father Bogus Smirk.”
She taps the bloody thing again,
and still it doesn’t work.

Someone’s in the lavatory
–You can hear the water flush
Relayed by lapel microphone.
It penetrates the hush

Of the devout and penitent.
And now here comes the priest
All smiles and new-age chasuble.
But how his brow is creased.

When he says, “Hello,” acoustic feedback
Booms. He looks unhappy.
“D’you mind?” he asks. Clearly he blames
The electrician chappie.

The electrician is devout,
But he'd rather not be here.
Far better in the “Horse and Groom”
With mates and darts and beer.

But off he whizzes, tweaks a wire
The Mass can now begin
With folk choir’s shrill cacophony
Guitars’ unlovely din.

And so it goes, smiling and smug
Busy ladies bustle
And organize, but how we miss
Some theological muscle.

Bishops take bearings on a cloud.
The Barque of Peter rolls.
Despite the Pope, its mutinous crew
Are heading for the shoals.

Chesterton should be living now,
Belloc and Martindale,
To tell us how we gained the trite,
And lost? Why, there’s a tale.

Lost reverence, fear, the numinous,
Lost sense of sin. And gained?
A Church that does not speak its Faith,
Weak, wandering, muddled, maimed.