Moderator’s note: in today’s “Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keiler, there is this poem by Fr. Killian McDonnell, OSB. Do you know who the Cassian scholar is, or the “artist suffering the visually illiterate”? How about the “two determined liturgists”?
The Monks of St. John’s File in for Prayer
by Kilian McDonnell, OSB
In we shuffle, hooded amplitudes,
scapulared brooms, a stray earring, skin-heads
and flowing locks, blind in one eye,
hooked-nosed, handsome as a prince
(and knows it), a five-thumbed organist,
an acolyte who sings in quarter tones,
one slightly swollen keeper of the bees,
the carpenter minus a finger here and there,
our pre-senile writing deathless verse,
a stranded sailor, a Cassian scholar,
the artist suffering the visually
illiterate and indignities unnamed,
two determined liturgists. In a word,
eager purity and weary virtue.
Last of all, the Lord Abbot, early old
(shepherding the saints is like herding cats).
These chariots and steeds of Israel
make a black progress into church.
A rumble of monks bows low and offers praise
to the High God of Gods who is faithful forever.
“The Monks of St. John’s File in for Prayer” by Kilian McDonnell, OSB, from Swift, Lord, You Are Not. © St. John’s University Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission.
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