MR ABBOT'S NAP

A satirical poem about an abbot living the good life at the expense of poor, religious people.

MR ABBOT’S NAP

Noon already sounded in the church tower.
The village is silent and sad. The sun blazes.
Among the muffled, scorching murmur of the light,
As in a great oven, the great bare mountains
Anneal, splashing the heather between the crags.
A demented beggar, covered in sores,
Sleeps stretched out in the sun in a thick lethargy;
And the feverish flies in the leprosy of the head
Stab him buzzing with the caustic of the spears.
Pigs and children are the only ones on the streets.
Hunger, desolation, mourning, widowhood, misery
In the dead village. The squalid and funereal land,
Instead of songs of abundance and love,
Of the green wheat laughing inside the flowering hedge,
Calcined and cruel, it spits violently
Only the twisted, epileptic, burning thistle,
Breaking hard and hostile, like the blasphemous plague
Of a murderer when a jailer shackles him.
The fountains and streams have dried up completely.
In the crackling dryness of the undergrowth, snakes
Hiss. The air chars the thirsty trees,
In a glittering, intense dust of suction cups.
From the bare hills beyond, in their dry epidermis,
The flocks are like a swarm of worms.
And the vault of the sky, a shell of red-hot zinc,
Where the aerial stain of a wing does not pass,
Implacable contemplates the solitary land,
Like a sultan staring at the carcass of an outcast!

And typhus germinated in this scorched misery.
The epidemic, the wandering soul of Locusta, (1)
Diabolical and subtle, it ferments, poisoned
In the asphyxiating splendour of the atmosphere ablaze.
Within the gloomy darkness of the shacks,
The old villagers, undermined by fevers,
Agonise; in their final delirium,
Between the concave sound of the gravedigger’s hoe
And the hoarse chant of ominous Latins,
They listen, crazed with pain, to the funeral wails
Of the skinny oxen with their moribund and serene gaze,
Down at the stable with no hay,
Mooing, mooing, fallen to the ground, abandoned
By the old useless skeleton of the ploughs!

From time to time, from the deep and tragic muteness
Of a hut, a cry of widowhood breaks out,
An outcry of orphanhood… And then the bell cries
Bronze sepulchral tears in the vastness.
The wrath of God, whose gaze ignites,
Ran like a rabid wolf in the village,
There’s no fire in the home, nor bread in the cupboards.
Between the fingers of hungry mothers, the rosaries
Pass piously and uselessly, while
Death, the thin and cross-eyed hyena, lurks in a corner.
A cradle where an angel agonises, oh cruel pain!
Like a torn beggar, at the door of an orchard,
Eagerly lurking for some autumn fruit
Falling, colorless, from an already dead branch!

And the village invokes and pleads the guardian angels.
Starves to death and dresses the saints on the altars
With gold and brocade. The candles, night and day,
Light up the white image of Mary,
Like flickering woes of agonising light
Rising to the sky! Ululating processions
Of penance go, convulsed, dishevelled,
Crushing their feet on the cobblestones,
Tearing the chest, pulling out the hair,
And, with a thousand terrifying visions of nightmares,
Howling to God in a hoarse and barbaric clamour
Him to be a father, him to see this infinite pain,
And cast on that immense anguish, that sorrow,
A look where a drop of water finally shines!

In vain, in vain, in vain! In the afternoon the frantic sun
Dies congested, dazed, apoplectic,
And in the morning it explodes in the lividity of the east,
Caustic, flaring like a burning remorse!
And on the feverish nights, without air, without nightingales,
When the blue is a splendid brazier of echoes,
And when it seems that there are, scattered in the atmosphere,
The deafening vaporisations of a crater,
Behind the rough, bare mountain,
The full moon, red, opaque, bloody,
In a somber, crushing silence that oppresses,
Breaks out sinister―like the apparition of a crime!

And yet, in that flaming aridity,
Without a leafy branch on which a bird sings,
In that limitless scorching fire,
Oh cruel sarcasm! there are two oases in bloom,
With two tropical plethoras of greenery:

One is the cemetery, the other the curate’s backyard.

In the cemetery, Life, impetuous and strong
Breaks forth singing from the fertile womb of Death.
Vines, brambles, thistles, nettles, roses,
Sweet idyllic plants and dark plants,
The mandrake, the myrtle, the honeysuckle, the fern,
All this throbbing, fertilising, full,
In an anarchic tangle, pulses
Mad with sun, feverish with sap, drunk with gluttony!
There is a saturnalia next to each grave,
An incoming corpse is a new delicacy,
That worms decompose into brutal gangrene
For the mute, obscure lust of the herbs.
And when from its den the tomb larva
Tells the plant: «Here’s your dinner on the table,
Come eat it!» millions of reptile-roots,
Bloodsuckers with scalpels for mouths,
Will draw, absorb, vampirize from the bottom
Of that obscene cloaca, that filthy banquet,
A stinking and slimy slurry of horrors,
Which is the bread that God made to fatten the flowers!
And from the tomb of the hospice, hour by hour, it slips
A load of human rubble into the ditch.
Piles of dead meat accumulate to the nine an ten
In the same grave. Age and sex matter little.
They get mixed up in the rotten underground butchery.
And while a lily root sucks a skull
And a pustule gives a nectary its perfume,
In the celestial blue hovers the bloodthirsty raven,
The hanging tomb, the rising skiff,
Brandishing on each flank a sickle of darkness!
It would seem that Fate,
The old Thug, the tragic old murderer,
After a senseless and brutal hecatomb,
Had hidden it by throwing a honeysuckle on top,
A mantle of greenery and red corollas,
All starry from the burning gold of the bees.

And the presbytery? Look:

White as a betrothal.
Vines at the door and doves on the roof.
In that nest, hidden in leafy greenery
There is a kind of simple, rosy well-being.
It was a discreet nest, a good, faithful nest,
To suck a honeycomb from three honeymoons.
Anacreon (2), the divine erotic old man,
Contentedly he would end his destiny there,
Poor, joyful, happy, without remorse, without pain,
The jovial baldness under a toupee of flowers,
The glass on the table, the muse on his knees,
In the open air, singing red wishes,
Beauty, pleasure, youth and the sun,
With the grace of a blackbird and the voice of a nightingale.

Let’s take a look at this idyllic and peaceful resort.
But be careful! There is a priest and a dog inside,
And they both bite. But, as they both snore their naps,
Let’s go in. Right here in the courtyard through the gap
Of the gloomy cellar, opened just a little bit,
An intense and rich aroma of good wine emerges.
The abbot is a drinker. He drinks a lot.
There’s no one with a wine like his.
He knows a lot, he’s a master! The wine cellar is a pleasure
To go in there on an August afternoon.
What freshness, what cleanliness and what a nectar! Noah
Would need Japheth’s (3) cloak there
At all times, and the abbot himself and his nanny
Have used this cellar as their bedroom
Several times… Love cleaves to good wine,
If Venus was his mother, Bacchus was his godfather.
A sensible opinion that our abbot approves,
Especially if the wine is old and the woman is young.
In the round barrels and swollen casks,
Monumental bellies pregnant with laughter,
Sleep happily and silently.
The thirty thousand drunkennesses the Omnipotent Priest,
In his high design and infinite goodness,
Intended for the abbot’s insatiable wineskin.
And in the wine rack―a rich and centuries-old treasure―
Very old ideal ambrosia, gold-coloured,
Murmur softly in a crystalline, mellow voice,
A love song between a kiss and a rose,
And the rose opens its red petals to the kiss
Over the winged and diaphanous thrill of bees.
With such a rare elixir, which is like a setting sun,
That no longer heats up, but that illuminates us,
Satan himself, I do him this justice,
Wouldn’t be averse to saying Mass,
And myself, it’s my shameful confession,
But in short, what the hell!… I’d be a sacristan!

And next to the cellar there’s the ever-full granary…
But let’s go up quickly while the abbot brays
Sleeping, because if he wakes up and recognises me,
The visit is over and he may even give me some kick.
Let’s go step by step, slowly. The room
Is vast and white. The walls are adorned with
Sacred flaming hearts of Jesus,
Mothers of God looking to heaven and ten carvers
Piercing their breast, a Pius the Ninth (4) in colour.
Little lambs, angels, macaws, flowers,
Everything in beads, and finally a Dom Miguel first (5)
In chenille, which I would buy for a lot of money.
From the blackened ceiling, in joyful bushes,
Beautiful rubicund apples hang,
Bunches of grapes still laughing, quinces,
Everything framed with blood sausages.
In six leather trunks and in chestnut chests
The curate keeps the precious layette, the rich
Homely arrangement - sheets of extreme finesse
By the dozen, redolent of rosemary and lavender!
And, according to rumours, there must also be
A lot of [gold] pieces in these monumental chests.
In the background a library: a small bookcase
In an ordinary and simple student stand.
At the center has a gap with an unprecedented Christ
In the nausea of ​​the weevil agonizing in distress,
Burlesque white idol of rough shapes,
Black―from the sacrilegious excretions of flies.
Loose on the bookshelf, in four or five shelves,
Breviaries of prayers, sermons and nonsense,
Which have been providing for exactly thirty years
Bread for the spirit to the curate and bread for the body to the rats.
And among the books there’s everything. It’s a second-hand shop.
Packets of snuff, a deck of cards, a quince,
Spurs, pea seed bags,
Forks, a big horn, a glass, a mop,
Bowls with quince paste and jars with jams,
And even a greasy hat and a pair of boots!
On the table the inkwell and the skullcap. And, open,
A breviary, which, when smelt closely,
Fulminates, an exotic breviary where, in short,
There’s already much more sebum and moth than Latin!

And on each and every corner, in murderous piles,
Quince sticks, staffs and clubs and rifles.
And hanging dark and tragic from a wall,
As if it were the skin of a great dark monster,
The Loba, a cloak of spectral folds, (6)
Made to scare away souls and sparrows.

Next to the living room is the alcove. That’s where sleeps
The hippopotamus. See: The bed is huge;
They could fit on that vast mattress, easily,
The laziness of a pig and the lust of a friar.
The curate collapsed, torn-apart, snores,
Oily sweat fills his dullard forehead,
The taurine neck and the double chin that goes
From the chin to the navel, in crass undulation.
The gluttonous, erotic, sensual mouth,
It brings to mind the obscene faun and the cannibal,
And the rotten teeth, that storehouse of guano,
It’s like a dismantled Roman aqueduct.
What a sordid animal! What a belly! What a bulge!
It has bristles on his head and gorse in his ears!
And the nose? The nose! What a beacon! What an obelisk!
Pantagruel gave it the color, Gargantua gave it the line.
It’s Falstaff’s nose, epic, in grand gala,
Purple and set alight with cane fires.
From time to time the nanny, Herculean big girl,
―A big fish!―always happy and always playful,
Comes lightly to swat away, with immense precautions,
The faithless insects and the unbeliever horseflies,
That dare to put, what horror! the indecent thing
In the red cliffs of that huge nose.
I’ve never seen, my God, such a weird nose!
Roars like a thunder, hisses like a whistle!
It is perhaps the nose through which the Creator
Will blow the trumpet in the valley of Josaphat! (7)
Runs the most complex sounds range through the… alcoholic scale:
Sometimes it imitates a bucolic flute,
And others a cavernous Rilhafoles (8) organ,
With a big drunk Titan operating the bellows.
Sometimes the hoarse rumble of a storm
Wants to roar through the nasal Himalayas
Of the Abbot, but finding the two tunnels of the mountain
Clogged with infected dung and snuff,
Goes back and down another drain
To explode with a deep and tremendous burst!…

But what beatific satisfaction may be seen
In the vast stupidity of that idiotic face!
And do you know why Olympian and laughing sleeps
The Abbot? It’s because he’s just had this dream:
He dreamt of seeing a parade, oh illusory bliss!
A pagan procession, a parade of glory,
Acclaiming him. Leading, a sombre herd
Of porkers grunted this poem, in chorus:

God made the pig for the friar.
God gave us the hams
For his lards,
Mr Abbot.
Let’s grunt, then, let’s grunt all together:
Long live the abbot! Long live the abbot!!

Soon followed, in droves and flocks,
By partridges and turkeys and ducks calling:

Ducks, turkeys, chickens and partridges,
We are happy!
Oh, what a fortune!
How sweet it is to die, knowing
Of, well roasted in English butter,
We will go to the table
Of Mr abbot!
Oh, what a fortune! Oh, what a fortune!

Then, in a triumphal car thundered
A barrel dragged by a hundred yoke of oxen:

The dream, the song and the dance
Live in my belly,
What a trilogy!
Dreaming, dancing, singing!
Sadness died one fine day
In a wine press.
Go, Father-master, with bizarreness!
Pitcher in the mouth, let’s turn it over!

My Father master, never your beak
Tasted such rich wine,
No preparation!
Wine like this
You never drank it,
Never!
Drinking a glass, you give a sermon!

Come on, Father Master, set me a fountain,
Move me all the way into his maw,
My shark!
Then let’s roll around laughing,
Touching navels,
Touching bellies
On the floor!…

A graceful swarm of beautiful maidens,
Fresh and virginal like rosebuds,
The short skirt, the cheeky laugh, the honest look,
Letting you see your leg and fantasize about the rest,
Came behind singing this happy song,
To the sound of golden archlutes and pastoral flutes:

We are three hundred and sixty-six,
Mischievous eyes, blossoming mouths…
Worthy of kings!
And we come all, Mr Prior,
To give you what you know…
We are three hundred and sixty-six,
A leap year calendar,
Made of love!
Brand new book!… paper and text!…
Leaf through it without fear the sextus, (9)
Open the pages, Father Prior!

Finally advanced, indolent, slowly,
The large wagons of ‘Côngrua’ (10) and ‘Pé de Altar’, (11)
Pulled by two thousand pairs of donkeys,
Braying this heroic epic to the four winds:

Mr Parish Priest, the entire parish,
About four thousand onagers,
Very skinny,
Come and bring this to Your Lordship.
Excuse us, Mr. Parish Priest, for the boldness…
The offer is really stingy, it’s disgraceful,
A mere eight hundred ‘moios’ (12)
Of maize, beans, wheat and barley.
And we know that such a bad gift
For your teeth
It’s not enough! It’s not enough!
But the intention is good:
We’ve reserved the grain for you,
And for us only the straw.
Give to Mr Prior
Misery like this is shameful…
But accept this worthless treat…
Accept it Mr Parish Priest, by all means!
And now, Mr. Parish Priest, your blessing,
Because the onagers think
It saves from the flames of hell;
And in return for such a gift, such affection,
We will pray to the sky that, through the snout
May it allow you to fatten more and more.
Good bottle and good Alentejo (13) pork
And always full and happy and satisfied!…
Mr Parish Priest, long live!… see you next year…
See you next year… and enjoy!

The abbot, seeing that astonishing ovation,
Grew like a tower and swelled like a balloon.
And looking at himself with heroic and triumphant panache,
Got surprised with a ring and an episcopal cross!
And, haughty with vainglory and appalled with astonishment,
He swelled another half a league (14) and grew the same amount!
He then looked at himself with majestic pride,
And, oh heavens! he saw himself dressed in Roman purple!
Cardinal! Cardinal! Cardinal! What an honour, what a position!
And rose so proudly into the vastness
That the Himalayas, shrouded in their eternal snow,
He said to a condor:―Go up there and look at those legs;―
―Cardinal! Isn’t it a dream or a magical spell?!
Me Cardinal!!…―He pressed his noggin between his hands,
And instead of a hat dyed with swill,
He found the Popes’ Olympic diadem!
Pope!… And he raised his brow so high
That with it broke the horns of the moon!
Around the nose and around the ears
The stars buzzed, trembling like bees.
To be pope! To be King of Heaven and king of the world!
And from the top of the splendid and deep abyss
He cast his sacred blessing on the sea and the land.
And the sea turned into wine and the earth into a pie!
And the voracious colossus, seeing such beautiful things,
He bent over, squatted down, opened his throat,
And swallowed the amazing puff pastry in one go,
Drinking all the wine over it―the sea!
Then stuffed, inflated, a little crooked,
He fell asleep, heavier than a dead man,
Belching thunders.

And while the abbot snores and grunts carelessly,
The bells of the dead toll pungently;
The woes of the final rattle cut through space,
And among the fresh sprouts of the good meadow,
The abbatial mare with her foal,
(Which, if it were his, the abbot would call his
God-daughter) woolly, sumptuous, peaceful,
Free, no saddle, no bridle and no reins,
In the monastic peace of satisfied bellies,
With lush and tender alfalfa up to the breast;
Wreathed in the tawny splendor of the setting sun,
Meek, staring into the blue,―neighs orthodoxly!

__

(1) Locusta

(2) Anacreon “was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and erotic poems.”

(3) Japheth is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah’s drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, Caucasus, Greece, and elsewhere in Eurasia."

(4) Pope Pius IX “was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of 32 years is the second longest of any pope in history, behind that of Saint Peter.”

(5) Miguel I of Portugal “nicknamed”the Absolutist" … was the King of Portugal between 1828 and 1834."

(6) Loba - (translation) Ecclesiastical, clerical and honourable vestments that reach down to the floor, cut in such a way that the arms enter them; they are also worn by the beadles of the University. Some people call it a ‘loba’ (she-wolf) because it eats a lot of cloth. … source:

(7) Valley of Josaphat “is a Biblical place mentioned by name in the Book of Joel (Joel 3:2 and 3:12)”

(8) A reference to the Convent of Rilhafoles, later Hospital of Rilhafoles and since 1911 [psychiatric] Hospital Miguel Bombarda. Convento de Rilhafoles

(9) Leap year, from the Latin bis sextus dies ante calendas martii

(10) The parish ‘côngrua’ is the parish Christian tradition and the moral hand religious duty of the believer to contribute financially to the honourable and dignified support of his parish priest… Côngrua

(11) pé-de-altar “(ecclesiastical) budget that a curate obtains from ceremonies such as baptisms, weddings and burials”

(12) A traditional Portuguese dry measure, equal to about 0.78�"1.15 m³ at different places and times. moio

(13) Alentejo ’is a geographical, historical, and cultural region of south�"central and southern Portugal."

(14) Any of various units of distance from about 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (3.9 to 7.4 kilometres). league

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-- From my book "The Old Age of The Eternal Priest", translation from "A Velhice do Padre Eterno" by Guerra Junqueiro, published on Leanpub[dot]com[slash]theoldageoftheeternalpriest