Expectancy (After Christina Rossetti’s “The Thread of Life”)

Another one of my favourite Christina Rossetti poems is one of her least known – a cycle of three sonnets entitled, “The Thread of Life”. You can read the original here. In response to her poem, I have attempted my own set of three sonnets, working with some of Rossetti’s original theme. You might also notice evidence that I have been reading Ezekiel lately! I hope you like it.

Expectancy (After “The Thread of Life”)

 

                                    I.

The dryness of these bones in heat of day,

The fraying ends of hope, the valley wide

Where questions echo, empty, un-replied,

All speak futility in every way.

Before so many bones, what can I say?

What, shall these bones live? I’m not qualified

To say or know such things: would God confide

In sons of men, composed of bone and clay?

For I myself am out of breath and parched,

Sometimes a king, sometimes a vale of bones;

And I have watched the armies as they’ve marched

Up from their graves and into fields and homes,

Yet here we wait, as exiles, though we’ve searched

The sky for signs of breath; we wait, with groans.

 

                                    II.

And so all hope fades into self-defeat;

The rise of bones is fine for fairy-tales,

We mutter in our teeth, but now the scales

Have fallen from our eyes (so we repeat).

We keep our gaze fixed firmly on our feet,

Afraid to look too high, to pierce through veils,

For everything we trust in always fails

And every future tide will soon recede.

Still in my ear this question: Son of man…

Still: Shall these bones live? Yet no rustling breeze;

No breath yet in these bones, though now I scan

The valley floor, expectant. Static trees

Stand still, skeletal, waiting for the plan,

The signs of wind in faintly blowing leaves…

 

                                    III.

Death now pervades the air, but soon the day –

Now small, a kernel falling to the earth –

Will lift the valley’s bones up with new birth,

New life, thrusting old death out of its way.

Now hope is faint, and dry bones seem to say

That graves will win each battle, but the mirth

Of life still in the soil will soon unearth

A truth that our worst fears could not decay.

And then our bones too will, with joyful shout,

Connect, each bone to bone, and rushing breath

Will come from every wind, without a doubt,

And breathe into the slain; from underneath,

The soil will burst forth with spring and shout

Its victory chant – gone, gone, the reign of death.