Prayers at the Foot of the Altar

By ( articles ) | Feb 20, 2006

From the Missale Nonoxynolense (Redondo Beach: 2009), translated from the demotic Californian by Sr. Marie-Eugénie de l'Assomption, SL.

I come to the coffee-table of the Lord
   To God who gives joy to my youth.
Plows are tacky, but I love a beaten sword;
   So strum the harp, and pour the sweet Vermouth!

Let us rise, uproot our oaken pews,
   And cast them in the Lake of Innisfree:
Then build (in def'rence to a younger Muse)
   Unstructured space for worship/ministry.

O hang the walls with bead-work from Malaya,
   Beneath my feet a lilac carpet lay.
Lava a romanitate mea
   Et a machismo meo munda me!

Put a watch before my lips, O Lord,
   A Rolex by the gatehouse of my mouth,
That we might hymn (in liberal accord)
   The macro-economics of the South.

Incline thy ear to this my tongue's oblation;
   Spurn not inclusive liturgy resoúrces;
For I sing a song of human maturation
   In words our campus Worship Team endorses.

A polyester ephod weave for me
   To grace thy courts on ferials and festals.
And might we laud thy Domesticity
   With earthen-ware, and more-than-earthen Vestals.

Deliver us from Krakows and from Galways --
   Benighted ghettos blind to their mistake;
Enlightened minds cry, "Give us this bread, always --
   And let the peasants starve, for pita's sake!"

Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J., presides (L.A. Catholic Worker photo