HEADNOTE

Sometimes it is necessary to "drop names" all over the place. What better way for a minor poet to make himself a bit more cheerful than to link himself to others far better known?

In 1972 I published the poem below in The New Laurel Review. Prestigious little magazine! Not quite as much oomph as getting something in Poetry, but it's not a bad place to be seen. But, on to the names!

Published in that issue were:

* Carlos Baker -- the Princeton professor who did the standard biography of Hemingway and who has published poetry in most of the prestigious magazines.
* Calvin Claudel -- a member of the French Academie and the son of the French poet Paul Claudel.
* Richard Harter Fogle -- the primo scholar on Romanticism in American Lit and holder of the title "Distinguished Professor of the University" at Chapel Hill.
* Laurence Perrine -- the scholar and poet so many of us know from his little book Sound and Sense.
* Warren O'Rourke -- "Alabama poet and teacher, is a widely published southern writer."
I wrote the poem about the time that Pope John XXIII abandoned Latin as the language of the Catholic mass. And, although as a junior high schooler, I was very deeply into being an altar boy and feeling cool because I could actually understand what was being said, by the time I wrote the piece I was more of an occasional visitor to Catholic churches than a serious communicant. There is, however, still something cool about the Old Roman Church, but I have never forgiven Pope John for getting rid of the Latin.

St. Monica's Chapel Revisited

The chipped and peeling statues still suggest
The form that was.
The altar step where I once knelt
Has cracked,
Perhaps beneath the weight of years,
But still invites some part of me.
Memory of clinking censer, cruets filled,
The tiers of candles lit,
A scarlet chasuble.
This aging priest
For whom the wine once more becomes
A savior's blood
Despite the Englished incantation
Elevates some fragments
Of the past --
Et introibo ad altare Dei.
Ad Deum qui laetificat
Juventutum meum.

These fragments still suggest
The form that was.

-- Warren F. O'Rourke, 1972
The Latin passage in the poem is the way every mass started in the old Latin days. The priest would say: "And I shall go in unto the altar of God." The altar boy would answer: "To God, who giveth great joy to my youth."