Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service by T.S. Eliot

Look, look, master, here comes two religious
caterpillars.
The Jew of Malta.
Polyphiloprogenitive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

 In the beginning was the Word.
 Superfetation of [Greek text inserted here],
 And at the mensual turn of time
 Produced enervate Origen.

 A painter of the Umbrian school
 Designed upon a gesso ground
 The nimbus of the Baptized God.
 The wilderness is cracked and browned

 But through the water pale and thin
 Still shine the unoffending feet
 And there above the painter set
 The Father and the Paraclete.
.    .    .    .    .
 The sable presbyters approach
 The avenue of penitence;
 The young are red and pustular
 Clutching piaculative pence.

 Under the penitential gates
 Sustained by staring Seraphim
 Where the souls of the devout
 Burn invisible and dim.

 Along the garden-wall the bees
 With hairy bellies pass between
 The staminate and pistilate,
 Blest office of the epicene.

 Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
 Stirring the water in his bath.
 The masters of the subtle schools
 Are controversial, polymath.