The Lament of the Returned Irish Emigrant (Author Unknown).

The church still stands among the elms, the tombstones all around,
The yews still cast their ordered shade across the holy ground.
The frost of thirty years lies white upon my exiles head,
And lichened names call back to life the village of the dead.
I wander down the winding road and in the convent gate,
An acolyte that comes for Mass, some thirty years too late.
The chapel door is open, as on that parting day,
The font still asks a passing prayer for John and Ann O'Shea.
The wee red lamp still trembling glows, among the shadows dark,
And all the change of changing years has left no slightest mark.
I bend my knee and thank my God - O Blessed be His name,
One sacred spot in all the world will ever be the same...

I say my prayer and dust my knees and go to ring the bell,
Will the portress still be Bernadette? We young lads loved her so well.
At breakfast for the forty hours or Reverend Mother's feast,
Oul' Bernadette used do us proud - far better than the priest!
Her apple cheeks were all a glow, her smile was always gay,
For "holiness is happiness", oul' Bernadette used to say.
Teresa was the sacristan, another walking saint,
She's set the vestments twenty times, and divil a complaint.
God bless the old harmonium too, that Pius used to play,
Its Tantum Ergo wheezing out on Benediction day.
With the roses on the altar and the incense in the air,
No sooner were you in the door, than you felt the power of prayer.
These holy recollections of the grand old days of yore,
Were interrupted soon enough, by the opening of the door....
I gazed up through the mist of years and saw with vast surprise,
A mini skirted whipster with a veil and made up eyes.

"Yes my man" sez the smart young girl, but as soon as she'd begun,
I doffed my hat and said politely, "I'd like to see a nun."
She gave me a look that would poison a pup and said with a kind of sneer,
"I'm afraid my man, I shall have to do,- I'm the only nun that's here.
"The rest of the sisters are old and sick, or gone to a seminar,
Or off to the town on social work, or out for a drive in the car”.
What's your name sez I when I got my breath, and it came back kind of slow,
"It's Sister Penelope Brown" sez she, if that's all you want to know.
"And is oul' Paphnutius still alive? Just tell me before I go".
"I'll go and see, sez she bould as brass, "for with her you never know"!
So poor Paphnutius staggered along, and clung to her chair and stick,
The tears coursed down her furrowed cheeks, as she cried "Me darlin' Mick"
"O sorra the day that ye went away and I'm glad tis back ye came,
But things is bad and the world's gone mad, and the convent is never the same;
There's never a moment of innocent fun, or joy or prayer or peace,
With the nuns all over the countryside, stravaiglin' round like geese;
You'll meet them marching down the street, like peelers bould as brass,
And gawkin' around like the peelers too, at all the folk that pass.


Sure the chapel is lonely, as the grave, except at the hour of Mass,
When they're bawlin' and brayin' the Protestant hymns, like Patsy Donegan's ass,
And the din of the music splits your ears, you'd hear it in Raheenbar,
With Benignus banging the banjo and Imelda the guitar.
Do ye mind that forward Sister Rose, a brazen one at best?
She tortured us all with her modern talk, Renewal and all the rest.
Sure a year ago come Michaelmas Day, she leapt across the wall,
With a little maneen in the National Bank, from the north of Donegal.
And Berchmans too with her grand M.A.- ye'll remember her for sure,
She started sociological stuff and talkin' about the poor;
So she left the convent to work for God - her conscience said it was best;
Then she married a Guard and she's feedin' hens, beyont in Parteen West.
If Immaculate Heart was alive today, we know what she would do,
Sure she's pack their bags and belt them home and right good riddance too.
If things go on the way they are, sure we'll see the Novices yet,
Playin' poker with the doctors' wives and boozin' with the vet."

I left the convent grounds that day, my head in sorrow bent,
Up the twisting road to the old churchyard, in tears once more I went.
I stood by the grave of Father Pat, to the holy man I spoke:
Was he wastin' his time in heaven or what, with religion becoming a joke?
O how could he preach to the people now, on the Pillar and Ground of Truth,
With the clergy, all at the races and the women in Maynooth?
And the faintest ghost of a whisper came, down from Heaven's gate; -
"'Tis no longer Faith and Fatherland, son, 'tis only Church and State"!