Whisk(e)y cake

Whisky cake, O Whisky cake!
O alcoholic, frisky cake!
Oh, had I known what lay in store,
I might have spurned you, risky cake. 

In Sainsbury’s store lay requisites:
Spices, flour and fruity bits,
A pretty tin to carry you,
With flowers and hearts and such-like glitz.

A Sunday afternoon of baking,
Rubbing, stirring, sieving, shaking,
Oven heated, cake tins greased,
Oh the joys of fruit-cake making.

Savouring the rich aroma,
Amateur – that’s a misnomer –
(What is it comes before a fall?)
Give myself a chef’s diploma!

Sifted sugar, butter, zest,
Orange juice, freshly pressed,
Lastly whisky – that’s the icing,
Made with nothing but the best.

Actually, some might disagree,
About the whisky, for you see,
Tullamore Dew is not a Scotch,
But Irish whiskey, with an ‘e’.

Now the cake is good to go:
Icing like a field of snow,
Smooth and pristine. O vain cook –
Foolish braggadacio!

So the overweaning fool
Tenderly drives the cake to school,
Treads the darkened corridors,
Trips and drops it: fate so cruel!

The horror! The horror! Dark heart so sore:
Thus the world ends, with no more
Than a bang from the tin, a whimper from me:
Out of the cake tin, onto the floor.

All is not lost! The fates relent;
Though the icing's ruined, and the lid is bent, 
The cake survives, the tin’s upright —
Put on hold the last lament. 

A lesson in humilty,
And the advisability
Of caution in dark corridors
To guarantee tranquility.

Maundy Thursday

He'd have had his feet washed sometime,
not with rich perfume or gushing tears,
but with water, by a hard-pressed servant,
slave almost, eyes cast down, and
shoulders sagging from a lifetime's toil.

And he'd have noticed. The servant
would have mattered, have counted to him.
And he'd have stored up in his heart
how our comfort comes at others' cost,
our humanity drains as we deny the human.

That night of all nights, in the upper room,
stripped of all finery he washed our feet,
became the untermensch, beneath notice.
Peter noticed, and couldn't bear it. A kingdom
without kings, a commonwealth of servants.

Have we kept the kingdom free of slaves,
learned the hard lesson he taught to Peter,
been servants of all, and sought the lowest place?
Remember the dusty feet that stumbled and fell
carrying the heavy cross to Calvary.