The Sunday Sermons Poem by Francis Duggan

As a boy I was surrounded by religion
And I remember all too well
The sunday sermons by the priest from the pulpit
Of the afterlife of heaven and hell.

He had us believing we were sinners
Priests are well versed in the spreading of fear
He had us convinced Satan was in us
And God to us not anywhere near.

The god he believed in must have been unforgiving
For to punish us for every sin
His unseen God of the great Universe
He never spoke of a God within.

On looking back fifty years later
I recall the silly lad I must have been
An innocent boy of the fifties
To the ways of the World quite green.

The ageing priests back in the fifties
Are with life's departed today
But they never did come back to tell us
Of this Paradise from Earth far away.

The priest at sunday mass waffling on from the pulpit
Of our sinful ways and infidelity
That led us from God to Satan
To me one more fading memory.