It was late when we chanced on the seminary
.
Dark and wet and late.Windy, cold, forlorn.
Lights low. Not a soul to be seen, no candle
burning at either end of the long corridor. 3
The silence was the midnight ash sifting,
the ember-shifting stir in a presbytery grate.
The silence of pre-dawn meditation.
The incredulous silence that follows accusation
when the chillingmessage filters down the waxed
corridors of ears and a full confession is warranted.
*
Processing against the currents of empty space,
we scrutinise the scrubbed, smiling
Ordination Day faces on framed photographs,
numbers dwindling towardsmillennial zeroes.
Portrayed along the hall in holy oils, set forever
in their pious ways, prelates robed in princely
satins,
Sunday best, are taken by surprise;
men at ease with talk ofmagisterium,
fides divina, who believed – in all
good faith – they served a sacred mission.
*
Bare ruined choirs, labourers too few,
the seminaries drift nearer the abyss;
and in deconsecrated buildings, converted
to hotels, couples immerse themselves in
whirlpool spa, jacuzzi, ormortify the flesh
with weights and treadmills in the gym.
God is well and truly dead and buried,
his name no longer raised in polite company.
Mystery solved. Case closed.
*
High time, therefore, to leave the long corridor
– its wimpled lilies, its festering anemones –
to its own destiny, sad relic of another age.
Not the faintest ray, not the dimmest glimmer
of light, shines at the end of its tunnel
vision, not a hint of the infinite can be divined.
DENNIS O'DRISCOLL