Sabbath


Sabbath

 

Friday’s the Sabbath, for offering prayer

(Though there’s no room for women with free-flowing hair)

To press brow to floor and nod along to imam

Fear his wagging finger and the lie of salam

 

Saturday’s the Sabbath, time to don your best hat

Your virgin white stockings and shiny black tat

To suffer Jehoviah and wail at a wall

While Lilith is shunned and the Unchosen fall

 

Sunday’s the Sabbath, for songs of great praise

To the immortal, invisible and ancient of days

To Father and Son and sometimes Maria

And the ghost of a dove that the wise call Sophia

But mostly your hymns are not sung for her

But in fear of your Lord and sleek Lucifer

 

Monday’s the Sabbath, to get Mammon’s work done

To violate Gaia for a cheap precious sum

For profits not prophets, for rape and for pillage

For Pacific nuke tides and Alaskan oil spillage

For your new Prada shoes and lines of cocaine

And the cold celebration of all that’s profane

 

Tuesday’s the Sabbath for conflict and war

For maintaining hostilities just as before

For a wielded machete and the grey drone of death

For the proud strut of soldiers and their last lonely breath

 

Wednesday’s the Sabbath for trickier folks

For conmen and harpies and poets with jokes

For scientific assessment and moral pollution

For Dick’s monkeys’ uncles and a final solution

 

Thursday’s the Sabbath for the noblest and worst

For Odin, false preacher, for gifted and cursed

For Jimi’s bold axis, Blake’s proverbs from hell

For scholar and teacher and Donne’s tolling bell

 

Friday’s the Sabbath for Brigid and Freyah

For Isis, Minerva, Lakshmi and Maya

For songs by sweet Ella and sad Lady Day

For shoplifting frocks and love’s jealous play

 

Saturday’s the Sabbath in the arena of dreams

For Corinthian spirit and the toughest of teams

For drinking and dancing and losing your way

For walks of false shame in the fresh light of day

 

Sunday’s the Sabbath, it’s God’s day of rest

To remind us that all of humanity’s blessed

That love has no boundaries, it’s naked and free

Though bound to warm earth and nailed to the tree

That Sun, Moon and stars and heaven’s great flow

Enrich all mortals: As above so below

 

 

Neil Spencer

 

 


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