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Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service

Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.
Jew of Malta.

POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE  
The sapient sutlers of the Lord  
Drift across the window—panes.  
In the beginning was the Word.  
 
In the beginning was the Word.  
Superfetation of,  
And at the mensual turn of time  
Produced enervate Origen.  
 
A painter of the Umbrian school  
Designed upon a gesso ground    
The nimbus of the Baptized God.  
The wilderness is cracked and browned  
 
But through the water pale and thin  
Still shine the unoffending feet  
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
.    .    .    .    .    .
 
The sable presbyters approach  
The avenue of penitence;  
The young are red and pustular  
Clutching piaculative pence.  
 
Under the penitential gates  
Sustained by staring Seraphim  
Where the souls of the devout  
Burn invisible and dim.  
 
Along the garden—wall the bees  
With hairy bellies pass between  
The staminate and pistilate,  
Blest office of the epicene.  
 
Sweeney shifts from ham to ham  
Stirring the water in his bath.        
The masters of the subtle schools  
Are controversial, polymath.
Other works by T. S. Eliot...



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