Cathy’s Clown
‘I die each night I hear this sound / here he comes that’s Cathy’s
clown’
As the Anglican communion withers on the vine,
After centuries of Brexit-like post-papal decline,
Britain finds its new age built on a looser soil,
Belief brittle, online, feckless and vainly personal,
As if the idea of a higher being was a crass magic
That the Francis Crick ‘team’ had finally licked
With an ace crackerjack vaccine that mainly works
When it infuriates the French, Germans and Turks…
What other church is overseen by a former oil exec
Who admits to often being a bit depressed, atheistic?
It’s difficult running a side-split faith organisation
Derived from a randy king’s desire for penetration
In multiple ways not approved of by the testaments –
Only in England could ‘bells and smells’ be meant
In the best possible way, could priests be somewhat gay,
Yet told not to sleep together, in direct contrast, say,
To their founding tediously ruthless King Henry;
And yet, at Easter, even this motley, torn committee,
By definition mediocre, part-human, half-manticore,
Has to pause to reflect on the past four quarters,
And recognise that saving billions to shut vestry doors
Is a downbeat from love the meek, ‘focus on’ the poorest;
The trees have walked out of the forest, leaving a lone
Branch, on which waits a BAME uneducated allophone,
Who represents the structural flaws in every system,
For it is not our fault to sin; the seam leads to him –
We can unravel our corporate suits of tailored silk,
It does no harm, he cries to us, spilling graceful milk,
It’s an anachronistic message that doesn’t poll well,
It ‘turns off’ the Tory libertarian, the woke millennial –
No one wants to be told what to do, especially by a man
Claiming odd truths that don’t hate on the Romans.
Pay your taxes, never judge a sexual deviant, or leper –
It’s unpalatably kind, cowering, no lion, a low purr –
A belly rolled over, a shrug, a sort of giving up to higher
Laws, forces, another self or mind, as if to forgive liars,
As if to sue for peace, bury hatchets, let complaint go.
Not as if, that is what it is, a way to not become fixated credo
Above the moment’s compassionate facts on the ground.
Which is why, after lifting to be bled out he made a sound,
A sad death-rattle, that slowly, silently, then louder still,
Broke half the world open as a boulder shifted uphill.
April 1, 2021
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