Celestial Efficiency Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Luckily Mother Abbess will never be without a job, to
keep this Postulant humble and on my knees begging
the Heavenly Father to take me away because I'm too
sinful and simple to live, to do all this, the saintly Mother
Abbess changes every piece of work I submit

If I use her previous version or that of Bitter Little Miss
Lemon, she changes it to a different version; if I use her
different version she changes it to her previous version,
the same with Sister Strangelove, when I relate literally
she changes the text into idiomatic lines and when I use

The right idioms, she changes it to literal translation, now
standing here realising how very SWEET and BRILLIANT
the sisters in our little convent, my heart dissolves and
grows tender at the thought of how hard they work and
compete to keep my soul from perdition and my mind

From sinful pride, my body from normal health through
worry about what I'll do wrong next, how they sacrifice
their time to think up tests to keep me in a steady state
of confession; these sisters so elevated, so far above
my humble state, I can only stare and admire

Their celestial efficiency, their halos blazing forth in a
golden light of loving guidance for this little Candide,
this lowly Postulant forever to believe this is the best
possible world there is….