The Day of Saints - Day 32, All Saints

One Amongst Many (mugs!)

During my sabbatical, I have been reflecting on people of old who have come to be known with the epiphet of 'saint'. Whilst little is known of the lives of these people, their names are preserved. On All Saints Day, I was prompted to write about those whose names are not widely remembered either, those whose lives have been saintly, or godly as best they could be, but are not feted at feasts, or not otherwise commemorated on calendars. Hence, the following poem to mix in with the others.

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FOR ALL SAINTS

Saints Anonymous

We did not float across the sea on stones,

We did not count the frozen caves our homes,

We were not torn apart by wild beasts,

And thus were not appointed annual feasts.

You will not see our statuettes en masse,

We're conspicuously absent from stained glass,

No iconographers were ever called,

So commemorative art was not installed.

There's is no clamouring to name the schools,

It's a patronage reserved for greater fools,

Seldom seminaries spring up where we die,

Consequently, relics are in short supply.

No pilgrimage to quaint monastic cell,

No bathing in an epynomic well.

The tourists try in vain to find a line,

In the absence of the signage, and the shrine.

So charter buses not, nor make a fuss,

Collectively, we're saints anonymous,

And happy, we, our trumpets not to blow,

For our Lord remembers All Saints, high and low.

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