The Seven Last Words on the Cross
Here is pinned the unforgiving certainty of death;
He came there in silence,
wordless before his desperate accusers,
knowing the Word had become flesh.
To dwell among us was enough.
The revelation would come
through His being and His not being.
The truth He embodied silently
could not be shouted down.
Yet in His extremity, He spoke
and the words ring through us
to soften the horror of destruction.
Silence frightens us too much -
we have to hear something human
not just the slash of the veil,
the earth's rumble and the storm's crack.
'Father forgive them for they know not what they do'
The hawk's talon tears the flesh,
fresh, hot with blood
and we do not judge.
The mistletoe sucks the sap
from drying hulks
and we do not judge.
The Winter frost cracks the pot
and burns the roots
and we do not judge.
But we are a disapproving people,
finger pointers, forever tutting,
searching for villains.
Only with them in our sights
can we pretend to agency,
share in the fiction
that we are steering through currents.
And so, He gives us compassion,
a warm pillow on which
we can lay our heads
and drift away from the hammer
of nails through soft flesh.
Then, we can focus on forgiveness -
comfortably sinful,
blind to the cold truth
of our helplessness and ignorance.
'Today you will be with me in Paradise'
Was this just comfort? A soft man's solace,
to a hard man shivering childhood's fear?
Or does a bit of Old Testament God
reach through the savagery to assert
A morality we all understand.
Magistrates resume their place on the Bench
glad that Justice locks arms with Compassion;
parsons rise to the pulpit and smile
safely restored to benign righteousness;
power seizes the lie of certainty
to manipulate the mob’s vagrant passions.
Heartwarming, no doubt, to look
beyond the misdeeds of hungry victims
in a cold world, reaching out
to their hidden humanity, safely discarding
the rotting carcass of depravity.
But wasn't this supposed to be about Love,
about the endless unfathomable
reach of God's compassion beyond evil?
Perhaps this was a misunderstanding.
Perhaps the left hand thief in his disbelief
was to be lifted to Paradise, there
to find his rage and contempt enveloped
in tenderness, and his cold heart embraced.
'Woman, behold your son. Son behold your mother'
No father then?
No pensions for old age....
No police to protect the weak.....
No health service.......
No running water.....
No home deliveries.....
This is not sentiment,
not the gentle hand of affection.
It is the brutal reality -
the vulnerable need protection.
Affectionate company
in the lonely night hours
is our protective gloss.
These are words of down to earth
practicality in a world
where beggary sits waiting.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
I can feel him dying
hanging in my arms
and He cries this echo from the Psalms
while round my staked foot, the sighing
breathes a heaviness. Defeat
in full daylight must be faced,
the solitude of man embraced
in the last stuttering heart beat.
Gone is the adrenaline rush.
Duty's protective pain relief
is now discharged; belief's
fragile casing shivers beneath the crush
of death and the ticking clock.
The cruel logic of love
means no saving hand from above.
We will die, flesh, sea and rock;
zero is absolute, time will stop,
laughter's hands are held by pain,
reason will leave us insane.
In close embrace, I feel him drop
into death's finite fellowship,
the beat slows and the murmur of blood
weakens. Only in the grain of my wood
does defiant hope drip
that in some future parched earth
life can germinate
and beauty can create
at least for now, the mystery of birth.
The rest we cannot know.
“I thirst”
At the end, the body's need makes its plea.
The turbulent waters of infancy
are out of sight. Youth's cascades of delight,
the flash floods of desperation and joy,
have sunk underground, filtered to silence
through the dried seas of age. Love's soft moisture
has crystallized to salty deposits,
a crusty record of the past. No tidal
surges cleanse these dry sands, and the free flow
of the river has faded to bare rock.
Only brittle scrub covers this hillside
under the scorching heat and cloudless sky.
The thirst, so urgent as death's moment nears,
blends unnoticed into oblivion.
Desire evaporates to desiccation,
to bloodless leather, to dry bones and stones.
“It is finished”
We cannot see our own death.
Endings are a mystery
however often re-hearsed
in the dark rains of Winter.
The incomprehensible
is our constant companion,
whispering 'it is finished'
in our ears each time we pause
from action in solitude.
It watches us from the gaps
between unreachable stars.
A curt 'thank God that's over'
would mock the solemn story
through which we resist chaos.
A cry of clear logic then
as the beat of life is stilled?
But the genes go on fighting
to survive, indifferent
to an idea of meaning.
Past agony's exhaustion
there is no full stop until
the molecules' trembling stills
and Time lies in its coffin.
'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit'
We all have to give up control
and to let go of a future
which sits open-mouthed and vacant
round draught free sitting rooms, lost,
alone, cushioned by confusion.
Heroes though, we want to be filled
with a steel core of certainty;
to burst into oblivion
raging with the rhythm of hope;
or spinning a poetic phrase.
We use the empty tomb to
haunt these words, imbuing comfort
not available to all those
staring at the cross's horror.
For them, this was a giving up.
Il Terremoto
The old God of Abraham stirs
unable to comprehend the tender
countenance of the crucified servant,
and nonplussed by the hubris of earthly powers.
Is it rage or fear that sends the thunderbolts,
and shakes the earth free of its monuments
to the mighty?
He tears the temple veil,
throwing out the priestly rituals,
learning that truth hides in a warm embrace,
a salt tear and an unreasonable hope.