The Satires by Duncan McGibbon (free ebook reader TXT) 📕

are not so fortunate,
privilege has not yet been fully shared.
They struggle still to make things work
often they're on their own, having found
intimate sharing difficult. Of course,
you could expect us all to stand aside
and let whatever our love plants
grow uncultivated by prudent foresight.
And this is a problem you have to face.
Sometimes I think if it wasn't for Catholics
no one would find time for Freud these days.
You speak of a natural law
but never let nature govern you.
Though perhaps I should not have said this
I respect your views, though I cannot
understand it, nor why you care less
for seal-pups which cry in pain as cullers
mash their skulls. Though perhaps I should
not have said this either. I respect your views
and know you have your puzzles to solve.
We too must spurn sentimentality at times
but you must have the strength to realise
I too need your love. I too am Christ,
for this is your belief I suffer torments
of my lonely choice which no-one can
relieve me of. It is cold thing I have to do,
but it is done out of warm concern
I consult professionals and knew I have
a task to do. Pray to your Spirit
for me and in your prayers remember
only I can decide the future
of the gypsy people in this county.


1984

A Radical Theologian Predicts His Election As Chaplain To The Damned:
Jerdan Place, Sometime After The Last Judgment

I know it shall happen in this way.
The reprobate, with grudging steps
file in to celebrate their loss,
which is our gain, our family's joy.
Those with some weight to throw about
might shout for justice brazenly.
The rest will quietly perspire
through naked skins at what will come.
(Their only problem will be posture
which shall reveal how ill-prepared
they are for resurrected flesh.)
All will have earned the sentence passed
on legalistic conscience.
I shall forbid them any talk,
but meekly ask them bare their hearts
and from their Parish Hymn Books sing
'Peace, peace will come' but if they choose
'Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All'
it shall not wound us as of old,
for two-by-two with hymnals shared
they sing not for their own release
but for the triumph of our hope.
Felicity shall not be theirs
And once the sign of peace is passed
from each to each in wretched cure
I shall assume my priestly role
and, blessing them, give last advise
in their condition as the damned;
My homily should run like this:

Past members of the body dear
there is no peace assured for you
for Man Transcendent had advised
with true collegiality
that ignorance invincible
should thrust you from his blessed sight
Now your mentality of threat
will not discern how this can be
If it should keep you, bear from us
how you are part of His great plan.
And should it not, then I'm still here
to tell you how you met His gift
with individualistic threat.
We tried to cure your legal hearts
Through us the Lord once sent you help,
from Lumen Vitae came a priest
who strove to raise your bourgeois souls
from curial limitations.
Yet your tongues did not distinguish
law-like rules from special cases
and talked of Canon Law or worse,
of teachings magisterial.

At this, I know they shall be crushed
A silence now will rub it in,
before I prick their memories.

He came to tell you how his heart
was full of the experience
of holy matter in this world
and God's designs so intimate.
Why did you frighten him with thought?
He came to speak to you of love
and of relationships for which
he struggled to express a sense
of bodies close in warmth and care
His homiletic skills were moist,
especially on the theme of wheat,
or oats, of rye or fresh-mown hay.
Their nutty taste or squeezy feel
should have held you rapt in prayer
and stirred a caring urge for brutes
And yet you bullied him with talk
of open meetings in the hall.

On hearing this, the weak will break
which makes my work much easier
And yet the arrogant will fight
ungrateful in the very thought
my service has delayed their fate.

You would not let his body speak
of transubstantiation's joy
when viewed as loving act, not bread
So one Lord's Day with strength reviewed
in love he took a priestly mate.
Theirs was sacramental union
God, world and man it sought to join
You should have warmed to their affair.
Instead they suffered much for love.
On feast-days and on ferias
they used to amble up the aisle
concelebration was their aim.
He with his arm so gently slung
over her wet and hairy muzzle
She devoutly trotting along,
both vested in white amices.
They neighed through sacred history.
Page after page they taught to you
from cycle C, then B, and A
Yet you mocked this gifted couple
The stable-smell of innocence
which wafted through the Church, brought hate
The little worms that sometimes came
to worship, you would tread upon.

Here the younger ones may falter
I shall adopt a gentle smile
and intimate it is God's will
to list their faults before they burn

Your worst offence was when you forced
your hirelings in St. Stephen's Guild
to stage a futile bloody coup
when last the Parish Council met
under fadged up, shabby pre-texts
of injuries endured by them
at grooming vigils during lent
His mate had natural desires
to taste the substance of the word
on which you turned your backs and wrest
your nibbled missals from her teeth
Your wickedness would not admit
what word once swallowed must create
At Stations of the Cross, you moaned
though in pretence, that prayer was forced
while on both knees in fresh manure

At the bishop's visitation
your inherent violence flared
when, to reconcile the parish
meditative prayer was held
with charismatic Friesians.
At which you left the diocese
The turf accountant and the vet
alone held to the liturgy.
Their faithfulness has its reward,
Vatican 3 upheld their claims.
First at the Curragh, now in bliss
horse and rider are exhalted.
They would forgive you, if not outdone,
despite the special pleas we made
and plenary indulgences
of yours we've totalled more than once

After this there should be readings,
we'll have been through all that before
Besides they might decide they want to stay
such torpor I shall not allow
and with these words I'll lead them out.

Try not to reassure yourselves
that things will not be physical.
The subtle body's counterpart
implies humiliated flesh.
It will be sordid, but not for us
the witness of your sufferings.
Though we nurse a sense of grief
at your pains which have begun
the thought of you will soon expire
For half this time brings sense of loss
then half again the pain of sense
half that and nature drives you off
then the soul in decimal time
will thrust you in the dust again
Again in finite series, filing down,
the fires will have begun to near
that alien flesh you wear again
In our minds only it shall end
for you these torments shall go on
Now pass your hymn-books to the back
blow out all your Advent candles
Try not to stumble in the dark
which is inevitable yours.
Do not attempt to clothe your friends
or give them food or visit them
It will appear obsequious
Now go quietly to the vans that wait.
Do what your driver tells you to
We have negotiated strict
instructions with their unions.

Then vainly they shall troop outside
clinging in tears to new-made friends
This is the sight I know will be
Come Lord, forgive presumptiousness
let it come soon, the day I tell them;
‘Serve the Lord and go to Hell.’


1985

An English Romance

Her daisies still matting the sunk lawn
picked out the colour of celandines and
tall meadow-sweets which fringed its lime-green swathe.
to where creepers stretched on the south wall
their blossom hiding the vernacular brick.
Inside the house, she sat alone. The Times,
open at the obituary page, lay beside her.
Another of her father's colleagues had died
(tax undisclosed) 'He is survived by ten grandsons!'
The sofa was the size of a bed, but her sveltesse
took less space than one. Over a printed dress
she wore a smock of navy blue cloth which
her friend had made for her, 'hors de commerce'
It was late morning and a studied sunlight
from the French windows, filled the drawing room.
Benedict's car had just left for the city
(Predictions of foreign exchange were firm.
Though in Kent, word of marketing was heard
through the telex inside the stripped milk-churn.)
Schubert's molto moderato in Barenboim's
hands was easing itself into the space
left by her husband's departure.
Tonight the de Crespy's were celebrating
at Nani's. It caused her a momentary pause
that the place should be owned
by the wife of a television impresario,
but it was important that they were seen.
Thus the day was left for the garden; she had
seedlings still to bed out in the bare soil
along the east wall where the fuchsia
would bloom in late August. She stood up,
a small figure. Her pale, impeccable face,
a doll's porcelain which would have been
severe had not a child-like jauntiness
belied its features. Traces of scarring
could be seen by a sensitive eye
as she glanced up at the Paolozzi prints
from Kelpra's above the fireplace
She was far from those naive years at Keele
and those she had spent with a journalist
an Belsize Park. Robert had been ambitious.
He travelled and she with him, covering
the heady world of ‘sixty eight from Haight Ashbery
to Prague. A year later, with two film scripts
accepted and a contract for another,
she was pregnant. Robert never spoke of
the abortion. His work for the Fourth
International presupposed a more urgent
and theoretical commitment to future generations.
Their ground floor-flat was littered with projects,
but the main one, theirs, had been interrupted.
She went back to her father and to Sonning.
Their silence angered her and that night
she’d phoned Robert to come and get her.
After taking her to the flat, she never saw him again.

Outside the garden bloomed, punctual for its
present month. Its wild plantations of lupins
and heathers carried a balmy refrain
into the room. The sonata's first movement had ended
and the recorded fingers traced the chords
of the Andante, a shade too melancholy perhaps
She closed her eyes and thought of the cottage
garden she had known as a child in Kent.
The informal seas of simple flowers,
drifting in shimmering colours before her,
which blended with old stock of roses and wild lilies.

After the curiously prolonged pain of the operation
she joined Health Committees and wrote about
social services in the inner city for liberal papers
She met Benedict at the Jennings’ party
in Chelsea where he had rescued her from
a well-soused economic journalist.
They honeymooned in an old friend's Irish
estate where they rode, discovered
a dislike for shooting grouse and discussed
her fears for socialism now that the
rise of Euro-communism had been checked.
They agreed that the cause of independent
radicalism was best served from a platform
well within the confines of the establishment.
She felt secure with him, having seen so much drift before
and he, more restful, wanted to subsidise her dreams.
She could support community cells and
helped squatters and women's groups defend rights