Jesus, on discovering his Mum’s plan to appear at Lourdes

Mother, I’ll do you a rosebush;
Yes, yes, I insist;
It’s the least I can do;
Just a wild one;
OK, just a little scraggy one,
In the cliff, for you to stand on.
It will be in flower;
I don’t care what month it is;
It’s going to be in flower.
Everything else is ready:
The place is the back of beyond,
So far back it’s beyond beyond and again;
No-one knows Beyond goes that far back.
We’ve done stable,
We did that together;
This time you’re doing the tip;
The hospital tip:
Stuff that should be incinerated;
Some of it may be smouldering
And it’ll all be stinking and putrid.
You’ll find an illiterate peasant-girl –
No, she’s not stupid, just illiterate,
And sickly, she’s got asthma, poor lass!
And poor! Her family are so poor
Even the rest of the parish feel sorry for them.
So I’ve got to do something for you,
Something special,
Just a little straggly rose bush
And roses on your feet,
To show you’re special,
My mum,
The queen of heaven,
Talking to a peasant girl
Beside the hospital tip
In Massabielle,
Outside Lourdes, in the Pyrenees,
At the back of beyond.

So God comes, to redeem
Even the stinking corners of our lives
And even the hard, barren rocks.

F Mary Simpson