high days and holy days

I’m not a great one for remembering and celebrating the International-Day-of-This and the World-Day-of-That, but this week there were two such days I felt were worth noting: Monday was the feast of St Jerome, patron saint of translators, and Thursday was National Poetry Day in the UK.

Recently, I was given a copy of a poetry anthology called Read Me 2: a poem for every day of the year.

So far, the quality of the poetry has been “variable”. Today’s poem, however, is delightful and absolutely perfect for the blog this week. It’s attributed to that most prolific and popular of authors, Anon:

St Jerome and his Lion

St. Jerome in his study kept a great big cat,
it’s always in his pictures, with its feet upon the mat.
Did he give it milk to drink, in a little dish?
When it came to Fridays, did he give it fish?
If I lost my little cat, I’d be sad without it;
I should ask St. Jeremy what to do about it.
I should ask St. Jeremy, just because of that,
for he’s the only saint I know who kept a pussy cat.