Put up your hands, by Catherine Redfern

Put up your hands

All you Old Girls of convent schools.

Put up your hands

If, in pastel-paged autograph books,

You have these lines.

            Be Lady-like, be Mary-like,

            Be Mary-like, be Lady-like.

Yes.  Hands down.

Here was the life training

Of a Child of Mary.

Be meek, be humble,

Be obedient, submissive, uncomplaining.

To demand is unseemly in a woman.

The Blessed Virgin is watching.

Be worthy of her, be pure,

Let her be your model.

But, what of…?  What of sex?

Ssh!  A brazen word, a sinful word.

Oh, let us pray.

Or, let us not.

Now I fantasize, of course,

You can all see that.

Let’s rip off these blue-ribboned  medals.

Let’s crowd round the boys from St Joseph’s

Here  for our Corpus Christi procession

Let us roar:

“What do we want?”   “We want sex.”

“When do we want it?”  “We want it now!”

Well, we hardly manage that,

But we hover and we look.

Bold Brigid O’Flynn even passes a note.

But who glides here, black-robed and beaded?

“Girls, hand back your medals.

You have defiled them

You have shamed Our Blessed Lady. 

Join your hands, cast down your eyes

Mary, our refuge and our strength,

Pray for us  that, shunning all temptation,

We ever seek the virtuous path.        

Brigid O’Flynn,

You will report to Reverend Mother

 Immediately after Benediction".