LAUDATE SANCTI PERNICOLI

[A tribute to those who dust and clean

and polish in our beloved Cathedral -

the "Holy Dusters"]

We hags with rags from plastic bags,
We clean where we are bidden;
We rub and scrub and scour and seek
In corners dark and hidden.
With toothbrush, nailbrush, pad and bud
We poke and prod and labour
In carvings sharp of lute and harp
And pipe and drum and tabor.
No lurking dust escapes our eye,
No smudge evades our view:
With creaking knees - and wax from bees -
All things are made as new.
And as we buff (and huff and puff!)
We think of those before us
Who’ve laboured too to make anew
This House of God most glorious.
And do they watch, those gone before,
And do we work as they did?
And did their knees, like ours, seek ease -
And were their nails abraded?
And when their work was all complete,
With every surface gleaming,
Did they think then as we think now:
“There! That was worth the cleaning!”
We know that, through the years, the Lord
Sees cleaning as our praising:
He sees, and smiles, and understands
The dust we can’t help raising!
From roof to floor, for evermore,
From crypt up to triforium,
We hags with bags will use our rags
Ad Magnam Dei Gloriam!
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