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Rebirth of St. John's

1. FULCRUM

Four fifty five fervent faithful

fasted for fecund ferries,

far from feeble, friable feats,

frenzied feast from famed forebears.

2. SERVICE

A solemn procession emerged from the vestry of St. John's, now the tide is risen

a median cast blows up easily, the culture and the front: on the other path,

strict scripture and dogma.

The choir stayed home, the constituents otherwise  merged  with us,

the other ensemble was in their place:  low raffia slab, seven calabashes,

drums, low stools, gongs of woods and metals, flutes, rattles, whips,

and a vast thingamajig of totems set in their place, waiting for handlers,

confirming our nudiustertian concord, puissant manumitting of St. John's.

For many that left our conclave,

the fury of Abaddon and the silhouette of Gehenna was upon us,

For us, St. John's is born again.

Threats of ineluctable maniacal scrimmage, tortuous outcome, steadfast, still we stood.

How better to contend ?, making this faith truly our faith,

Stout panoply over the vestiges of a revered past.

Now that the procession ended, the virtuosi in my land took the choir stand,

In the sanctum sanctorum, a mixture of spirit and men.

To agglutinate our feast of the new Yam with the Christian rituals of St John's.

Seven fully decked masquerades, with all power and pomp

just emerging from seven vastly situated ant holes, smoking hot,

with pods of alligator pepper as food and stale palm wine as drink, had merged with the procession

and joined to sit in the chancel of the solemn service.

As they who bit into hesperides' golden grove

pure hearts stood in Church that day.

spirited panegyric to the creator came as our traditional masquerade chants

the drummers and the masked spirits, leading the charge.

Like the feasts of the Eleusinian mysteries,

Like Triptolemus, thankful to Demeter for the boon of tillage and geoponics,

Then our canticles of canticles, our canzonets, our madrigals, all soaked in by the big God.

Our presbyter also came,

White surplice and cassock, to read ordained scriptures

And teach the harvest; a feast of God.

And you rose  Didi, in the midst of the faithful,

A staff of the detarium senegalense in you right hand,

And a large Yam in your left, telling the myth of the Yam.

Of its coming,

Of all its types,

Of its wealth and growth,

Of its deities,

Of sons and daughters set apart for the Yam,

Of those who draw wealth,

Of them, whose skulls never would rest in the grave,

Of predestined marriages and the cult of the Yam

Of all the honors of the Yam.

Then we all, spirits and men, feasted on the Yam, blessed our land,

and blessed the new reap, for which we shall gather on the day to come,

Songs, chants, plays and dances. Putative raiser of our harvest.

 So I saw St. John's homologize with us

For when we had done singing ‘we plough the fields and scatter’

The chief Masquerade in the holy place, stood at the belvedere, made a signum crucis

And through those bellows, shuddersome and eidolic,

Laid out a lasting homily for St. John's.