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Poem

It was an island of piety
out of place in Port Adelaide’s 
working class sea of pubs.
Off the main road,
St Mary’s was a refuge
for the Catholic faithful
and a few wino’s 
pretending a prayer
for an hour of sheltered warmth.

Three masses on a Sunday
drew a dwindling crowd.
My grandmother, 
dressed in her best
with the mandatory hat,
went to the 10.30.
It was a mass 
for the elderly and the young
hung over
after a late night binge.

I cut my teeth there
on the grim chew
of its doctrine. 
Back then latin rattled through
its wheezy lungs.
Old, dark, paint peeled,
it always seemed a breath away
from its last.

Creaking pews, polished
to a shine by a century 
of sliding bums, would advertise
when you were late.
Stained glass windows
filtered sunlight
through a panorama of pain.
I was baptized by that wash
of joyless light.

Almost gone, St Mary’s 
was resuscitated by Italians
keen to cage a stake.
Their statue of the Virgin Mary
poked a Mediterranean finger
into the collective Anglo eye.
Jewelry dripped, imposing
and ornate, she affronted
local tastes.
Statues were for background,
guardians of peripheral regions
placed to arrest
a wandering eye
and bring it back to God.
This Italian Virgin Mary
stood like a crowned colossus.

The old bishop’s ghost,
they say,
still wanders the church
shackled to his guilt.
Mary McKillop hovers
in his tormented head.
She's gone to God and sits
a newly minted saint.

The church grows smaller.
Lodged like a barnacle 
on Port Adelaide’s rusted hull
it still hangs on.
The Italian Virgin Mary
now seems at home
and looks down 
on rows of vacant pews.
Outside - shoppers pass in haste
to serve more fickle gods.

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