[ar:Martin Shaw]
[ti.Martin Shaw - Diary Of A Church Mouse by John Betjeman. Bach - Sleepers Awake (excerpt)]
[a1:Words For You]
[00:00.00] Here among long-discarded cassocks,
[00:13.39] Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
[00:17.02] Here where the Vicar never looks
[00:19.04] I nibble through old service books.
[00:22.47] Lean and alone I spend my days
[00:24.89] Behind this Church of England baize.
[00:27.13] I share my dark forgotten room
[00:30.32] With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
[00:32.86] The cleaner never bothers me,
[00:34.51] So here I eat my frugal tea.
[00:37.26] My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
[00:40.78] My jam is polish for the floor.
[00:43.53] Christmas and Easter may be feasts
[00:46.10] For congregations and for priests,
[00:48.17] And so may Whitsun. All the same,
[00:52.12] They do not fill my meagre frame.
[00:54.30] For me the only feast at all
[00:58.26] Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
[01:01.12] When I can satisfy my want
[01:03.62] With ears of corn around the font.
[01:05.05] I climb the eagle's brazen head
[01:08.55] To burrow through a loaf of bread.
[01:11.05] I scramble up the pulpit stair
[01:12.48] And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
[01:15.48] It is enjoyable to taste
[01:17.47] These items ere they go to waste,
[01:18.85] But how annoying when one finds
[01:22.35] That other mice with pagan minds
[01:24.85] Come into church my food to share
[01:27.85] Who have no proper business there.
[01:30.85] Two field mice who have no desire
[01:34.35] To be baptized, invade the choir.
[01:35.70] A large and most unfriendly rat
[01:38.06] Comes in to see what we are at.
[01:41.06] He says he thinks there is no God
[01:42.97] And yet he comes...it's rather odd.
[01:45.55] This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
[01:48.69] (It screened our special preacher's seat),
[01:50.47] And prosperous mice from fields away
[01:54.34] Come in to hear the organ play,
[01:56.89] And under cover of its notes
[01:58.11] Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
[02:01.74] A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
[02:07.36] Am too papistical, and High,
[02:08.98] Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
[02:10.73] To munch through Harvest Evensong,
[02:13.92] While I, who starve the whole year through,
[02:16.69] Must share my food with rodents who
[02:20.38] Except at this time of the year
[02:21.71] Not once inside the church appear.
[02:24.59] Within the human world I know
[02:29.82] Such goings-on could not be so,
[02:32.00] For human beings only do
[02:34.78] What their religion tells them to.
[02:36.26] They read the Bible every day
[02:38.29] And always, night and morning, pray,
[02:40.24] And just like me, the good church mouse,
[02:41.98] Worship each week in God's own house,
[02:45.73] But all the same it's strange to me
[02:50.07] How very full the church can be
[02:52.59] With people I don't see at all
[02:54.71] Except at Harvest Festival.