The inevitable decline of ceremony.

In my lifetime
private ceremonies have mostly disappeared
(this must be one reason why some people
convert to Islam).  Few couples
light candles every time they dine, for
dining as a reinforcing ritual of mutual esteem
is becoming rare.  Of course, in Bad Old Days
there were the dreary, sometimes very fraught,
family meals where tensions rose to fractious
outburst, or kept the diners stiffly silent.  And those
where I was not allowed to leave the table
until I'd eaten most of the gristly meat,
rubbery tripe or tubey liver. Fish on Fridays
was such sweet respite! 
Eastern and Middle-Eastern meals on cushions
with various dishes to be eaten in any order
or not to be eaten at all are so much more appealing.

Likewise with music: smoking a marijuana-pipe
while listening to the 'oud or sitar or elbow-bagpipe
is so much more ceremonial, more intimate
than a concert-hall with rows of numbered seats
for music-muzhiks to sit upright, up-tight upon!

But I digress! Not only is there no ceremonial innocence,
but there are no private ceremonies of wisdom, either.
In societies where plastic flowers are placed
where road-accidents occurred - or bombings -
sex becomes the only outlet for sweet ceremony.

But sex as loving ceremony is probably as rare
as worship of a tree or spring.
(We worship only techno-gizmos now!)
Sex is the last cellar of private ceremony,
and more and more the seekers of catharsis
are deprived of any opportunity of psychogony,
while the religious, with passionate intensity,
dream of kissing angelic arses.