Page 19 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 19
THE O’CONOR DON SJ
Each morning he would meet the Mathews brothers
At the piggery near Saint Francis Xavier’s garden
On their way to serve the half-past seven Masses.
And he would hand them two hard orchard apples,
Lacquered on the wing of his black soutane,
And tell them the Lain for cooker and for pippin
And which was the Fruit in the Garden of Eden.
They would sink their teeth in them ater Communion
On the pillbox dome of the school Bomb Shelter,
A half-way house between pig swill and Pentecost.
He was Church and State, their own father told them,
Broadswords and breviaries in his blue bloodstream.
Yearly the Times would publish his birthday:
“The O’Conor Don, the last descendant
Of the High Kings of Ireland, is today aged —.’’
When he consecrated, a wolhound barked twice,
Once for the Host and once for the chalice.
But unless he eloped with a child-bearing bride
To beget a royal republican Don,
His line would end in a limbo forever,
An apple-core fed to the prodigal swine.
If the dream of a son made him cry in his sleep
She could drink his tears to become pregnant.
There’d be Fruit of her womb then, a kingly priesthood.
No wonder The O’Conor Don SJ
Wandered around the farmyard with his prayer-book,
Worrying which kind of a Father he should be;
Yet sill inding ime for the likes of two brothers
Who would leave this golden autumn for the winter
To marry the ilth and the lood like the Doge of Venice
With Jesus stuck on the train-tracks of their teeth
And the smell of pig-shit in their balaclavas.
The O’Connor Don: Charles O’Conor SJ strolling through
the grounds of Gonzaga in the snow
They Freewheel past me sill. It is far down the road.
Deserion, death, and the closed hospital wards.
It is a turning that we turn From in slow-moion,
Spellbound by our last sight of the twenieth century
Where Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent
And a stray went home on all fours to his family.
Seminaries silent. Churches sold. Priests in prison.
Children impaled. The annihilated father.
And all that harvest Fruit preserved now only
As pot-pourri in a toilet, an atomised windfall.
Holy Saturday 2010
Aidan C. Mathews
Class of 1974
Each morning he would meet the Mathews brothers
At the piggery near Saint Francis Xavier’s garden
On their way to serve the half-past seven Masses.
And he would hand them two hard orchard apples,
Lacquered on the wing of his black soutane,
And tell them the Lain for cooker and for pippin
And which was the Fruit in the Garden of Eden.
They would sink their teeth in them ater Communion
On the pillbox dome of the school Bomb Shelter,
A half-way house between pig swill and Pentecost.
He was Church and State, their own father told them,
Broadswords and breviaries in his blue bloodstream.
Yearly the Times would publish his birthday:
“The O’Conor Don, the last descendant
Of the High Kings of Ireland, is today aged —.’’
When he consecrated, a wolhound barked twice,
Once for the Host and once for the chalice.
But unless he eloped with a child-bearing bride
To beget a royal republican Don,
His line would end in a limbo forever,
An apple-core fed to the prodigal swine.
If the dream of a son made him cry in his sleep
She could drink his tears to become pregnant.
There’d be Fruit of her womb then, a kingly priesthood.
No wonder The O’Conor Don SJ
Wandered around the farmyard with his prayer-book,
Worrying which kind of a Father he should be;
Yet sill inding ime for the likes of two brothers
Who would leave this golden autumn for the winter
To marry the ilth and the lood like the Doge of Venice
With Jesus stuck on the train-tracks of their teeth
And the smell of pig-shit in their balaclavas.
The O’Connor Don: Charles O’Conor SJ strolling through
the grounds of Gonzaga in the snow
They Freewheel past me sill. It is far down the road.
Deserion, death, and the closed hospital wards.
It is a turning that we turn From in slow-moion,
Spellbound by our last sight of the twenieth century
Where Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent
And a stray went home on all fours to his family.
Seminaries silent. Churches sold. Priests in prison.
Children impaled. The annihilated father.
And all that harvest Fruit preserved now only
As pot-pourri in a toilet, an atomised windfall.
Holy Saturday 2010
Aidan C. Mathews
Class of 1974
