Tuesday, December 05, 2023

Poem for Monday and Zoo Meerkats

Diary of a Church Mouse 
By John Betjeman

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

-------- 

We had gloomy skies and drizzle on Monday, which is fine since it was a laundry, chores, and computer day around here. We went for a walk in the rainy late afternoon to the beach, where even the geese had gone into hiding, though the ducks were asleep on the shore. When we got back, we ate dinner while watching Monday Night Football, which was unexpectedly exciting when Cincinnati's backup quarterback turned out to have an arm and then Trevor Lawrence was injured, so the game went into overtime before the Bengals won. 

Now we're watching the first episode of the second season of Slow Horses after having finished the first season, which I enjoyed much more than I was expecting -- Gary Oldman is an awful person (spousal abuse and anti-Semitic rants are just a couple of his more charming attributes) but he is undeniably brilliant in this, and Kristin Scott Thomas is also terrific (and a Polanski defender, so also not one of my favorite people). Here's the meerkat family we met at the National Zoo last month when we were in DC:

2023-11-25 13.30.03

2023-11-25 13.28.08

2023-11-25 13.28.03

2023-11-25 13.26.10

2023-11-25 13.22.28

2023-11-25 13.26.36A

2023-11-25 13.00.09

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