Poetry

The Salami Treatment

Bruce Dawe

Contents - Dec 2004 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Religious literacy: why not a national inquiry? - Michael Gilchrist US and Australian election results: the cultural revolution challenged - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Gone fishing: Catholic Earthcare Australia adopts discredited Green agenda - Pat Byrne Administration: Cardinal Pell: Church administrators must put Christ's mission first - Cardinal George Pell English language: Will Rome ensure the completion of an improved Mass translation? - William Oddie Liturgy: Redemptionis Sacramentum on the liturgical rights of the faithful - CDF New Evangelisation: Rebuilding a lost Faith - Fr John Walter Archbishop Fulton Sheen: 25th anniversary - Martin Tobin Society: American surveys show advantages of sexual abstinence education Letters: Orthodoxy succeeds (letter) - Fr Adrian Head Letters: Seminary reforms (letter) - Fr Peter Thompson CM Letters: Election result (letter) - Maureen Federico Letters: Liturgical development (letter) - Msgr Peter J. Elliott Letters: Catholic youth (letter) - Robert Denahy Letters: Graham Greene a Catholic? (letter) - Malcolm Mackinnon Letters: Mass translation (letter) - Leo McManus Letters: 'Fem-speak' (letter) - C.V.Phillips Letters: Misunderstanding over 'Come As You Are' (letter) - Peter Hannigan Letters: Call to holiness (letter) - Mark Calleja Letters: Abortion (letter) - Maryse Usher Letters: Nihilism (letter) - Robert Prinzen-Wood Poetry: The Salami Treatment - Bruce Dawe Books: Decoding Da Vinci, by Amy Welborn - Anthony Cappello (reviewer) Books: Theology of the Church, by Cardinal Charles Journet - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: Making Sense of Private Revelations, by Fr Paul Newton - Msgr Peter J. Elliott Books: Architects of the Culture of Death, by Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker - Jodie Brown (reviewer) Books: Inspiring Christmas Gifts Reflection: Today is born to us a Saviour of the world - Pope John Paul II

on hearing "How Great Thou Art" cut in half at Mass, in the increasingly common dismissal of hymns as a central act of worship

O Lord my God we find ourselves now under
-whelmed to learn how low down on the chart
We now place hymns that tore our souls asunder
-How long O Lord before they all depart?

When such great songs of praise to Your creation
Can only win a verse or two from us,
We've clearly lost respect for all narration,
Perhaps from fear we'll miss some mortal bus.

And yet with this unthought piecemeal rejection
We've lost the plot, God's story lacks an end;
We've cancelled death and Heaven and resurrection
-They're all back there, abandoned round the bend.

And when Christ comes, how are we then to meet Him
Without Hosannas shaped to hymn His Name
-How shall we then, stricken hymnless, happily greet Him,
How shall we then conceal from Him our shame?

Bruce Dawe

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 17 No 11 (December 2004 - January 2005), p. 16