One night as I lay sleeping
the feckin statue started weeping
and I thought that this was odd
that the Blessed Mary, Mother of God,
should start this awful bawling
just as I was slowly falling
asleep. Oh, Jayzus, I thought, what now?
When my wife, a cute but gullible cow,
leapt up and landed upon her knees
and thumbed her blessed rosaries
with that glassy-eyed metallic stare
that shows how much they really care,
them ones who really do believe
(even when us others want to heave)
but that's more or less the local rule
and we send our kids to a Catholic school,
so you shut your gob and spread a grin:
let your wives analyze your lives with knives,
it's too late, mate, it's thick and thin.
I whispered to Paddy and Donal and Teague
do you think Man U will win the league?
Oh, God, that's a matter for disputation,
and we'll have to adjourn for adjudication
of the ins and the outs and the serious nub,
comfortably seated down in the pub.
But that's when my Mary gave me an awful shove,
and grabbed at my arm, and said, "Heavens above,
"It's a visitation of the Holy Ghost!!!"
(I could see my life would soon be toast)
"We'll make this house an open shrine!"
She's mad, she's married, and she's mine.
"Half Dublin will be walkin in the feckin door!"
"Well, sure, isn't that what Our Lady is for?"
"They'll be traipsing on the carpets, willy-nilly!"
"Ah, for feck's sake, don't be so feckin silly,"
says Mary Assumpta Dolores Brigid,
my convent girl, tough, and rigid.
"God and His Blessed Mother," says she,
"have showered down blessin's on you and me,
"they've come down here to our humble home".
(humble, me arse, amn't I still paying for it?)
"And can't you see," says she, "we are chosen?"
My smile is tight and bright and frozen,
when I think of them feckers in Rathgar
with their mobile phones and the latest car,
so why can't the Virgin feckin Maria
come down on them like diarrhoea?
"But just think of the crowds of non-believers,
"like the BBC and them other deceivers!"
"Sure they can kiss me arse," says she,
"them feckin Brits get on me tits".
I was away with the fairies, I forgot,
the wife's a raging pay-triot:
Wrap the Green Flag Around Me,
tighter, ye bastard, tighter,
she's nothing if not a fighter.
Ochone, ochone, just let me die
upon the fearful gallows high,
let me stretch out me neck for Oireland.
"Listen, now," says I, "me darlin' Mary,
"I'll not have you acting so contrary!"
"Baaa," says she, very wickedly,
but she listens all the same;
"Won't the Blessed Mary be just at home
next to the plastic garden gnome?"
"Is it mad you are," says she,
"are we to throw her out of the house
"and plant her next to Mickey Mouse?"
Right, so, it was just a passing thought,
I'm an aisy man, I can be aisily bought.
"Well, would you not think to put her down in the hall,
"so very close and convenient to one and all?"
"I would," says she. "Well, grand," says I,
so I called in the engineers,
(Paddy and Donal and Teague).
Now we've been living for years on Our Lady's tears
since the lads in fine style
installed a turnstile
and the coins of the visitors pay for the beers.
