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Feb 7
THE MAKER OF WORLDS

"Who made the world?"
and the cane
and the chanting

did their work
"God
made the world."

the church's Catechism
teaching him
by force...by rote

he smiles now at this
the only scrap
he can remember

"Good God...
it was I
who made my world.!"

here
at the centre of
my tiny universe

my thoughts
made the world
out of nothing

that tree was my tree
that nobody else
could see

the same
as I saw it
I a creator of my self

now
that Death
comes to visit him

he talks
to himself
Death sitting silently

the pain eats him up
from the inside
gnaws at him

as if he were a bone
***** the marrow
out of him

the world fading
to a bicycle bell and
children's skip rope laughter

he hears his voice
questioning
"Who made ***** tonk angels?"

the sacred
and the profane
a mash up in his brain

Kitty Wells voice
swims back to him
cutting through seas of time

"It wasn't God who made
***** tonk angels
as you said in the words of your song

too many times
married men
think they're still single

and that's caused
many a good girl
to go wrong!"

but now
the time has come
that is no time

he has abandoned
God
he sees the world

falling
out of his hand
he walks towards the light

*

A friend of mine who suffered a heart attack but survived to tell the tale...saved just in time by his friend the milkman who always came in for a cuppa. He found him fallen underneath a dark glass table and did the necessary to keep him with us and called an ambulance. He told me that as the heart attack had laid him low he was gazing through this table like a glass darkly! He asked me if I knew any of the Cathy( what we kids called the church's question and answer indoctrination)and I said only that first question. He said me too and that then dovetailed into one of his favourite Kitty Wells song! It made a good funny story he said but by God it hurt like hell.

My poor mother would sometimes burst into this song( no ***** tonk angel she)when she was doing the mountain of ironing that having 10 kids had brought into being. So to me too it had a loving memory and would invade my mind anytime I did my ironing. We drank a drink to not being dead and sang IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE ***** TONK ANGELS loudly and with great gusto. It is always good to cheat Mr. Death even if we knew he would come back knocking one fine day.
Donall Dempsey
Written by
Donall Dempsey  Guildford
(Guildford)   
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