Resurrection

Of course it breaks our categories
and makes our minds explode; the truth
does not sit neat in packages
and kernels break in soil.
 
If it fractures logic, let it;
it drives the doubting to their knees
while those who saw the proof’s flesh doubted
and those who saw the tomb ran home.
 
Let it burst our frames of reference;
it pushes stones with shards of light
and takes what is sown mortally
and makes it never die.

Repentance (Tuesday in Easter Week)

“Let the house of Israel know!”
He cried, and cut them to the heart
Who, guilt of Adam in their bones,
Had hammered in the nails.
 
“What should we do?” they cried in fear,
Seeing their hands at the cross,
Their sins like thieves at Jesus’ side,
Their voices raised to crucify.
 
“Repent,” he told them, “and believe.”
For he knew well the truth he spoke,
The broken one whom roosters heard,
Now called to feed His sheep.

In the Shadow

One of my favourite passages in the Bible is Psalm 91, with its beautiful opening statement that “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most Hight / will rest in the shadow of the Almighty”. Here is a poem that I have written based around that psalm – the next in the series of  poems that I am writing for my memoir project about the Psalms. Enjoy.
 
In the Shadow
 
The fire comes to take the barn;
The chicks are quaking with the fear.
The fowler’s coming with his snares;
           Yet you may rest beneath…
 
The night-time has its terrors vast;
The day has arrows flying by.
The darkness crouches, pestilent;
           Yet you may hide within…
 
Thousands fall at your right hand,
Thousands by your frightened side.
Fires and wars rage all around.
           Yet you may shelter in…
 
The shadow of the Most High stretches
Out like wings over your fears.
You will see your foes afraid
            And rest beneath the wings.
 
Angels come into the dark,
Feathers cover you, alone.
He who dwells within this shade
            Will find his shelter there.

Resurrection Virelai (Monday in Easter Week)

See Him arise
Much brighter than the skies
Victory in the eyes
Of great David’s greater Son…
 
He breaks the stones of lies,
Unties
The shackles we put on;
Dark Hades He defies,
Decries
The plots of the shame-faced ones.
Before their eyes
He takes His rightful prize,
Swift, majestic, like the sun.
 
See Him arise
Much brighter than the skies
Victory in the eyes
Of great David’s greater Son!

The Slow Dawning Part 4: The Emmaus Walk (Easter Day)

Day ending, night on its way, they walk,
Hearts thick with the talk of the days before,
Of expectation reversed and destroyed,
Disappointment turned to confusion,
To rumours and gossip of empty tombs.
 
A stranger walks beside them, asking for news.
Yet he knows the story from its genesis
And shows them snakes crushed by heels
And mountains where death is destroyed,
While their hearts burn slowly within them.

The Slow Dawning Part 3: The Empty Tomb (Easter Day)

Eyes cannot trust what they see, for here
He sees the place where the body lay,
Sees the cloths that should have bound him,
Sees the certainty of light and sees the day,
Yet sees no body trapped within this tomb.
 
Run home, for this makes no sense. It stands
Against all that you ever thought or knew.
Your eyes make your other senses fools
And cause your heart to hope that what
The rooster heard might be reversed…

The Slow Dawning Part 2: The Gardener (Easter Day)

Outside weeping, for this makes no sense,
Dawn slowly clawing its way out of the sky,
Mary’s name dropping from the stranger’s lips,
Mary’s eyes blinking open at the sound,
While Peter, in the background, runs home, confused.
 
Rabbouni! The disciple’s earnest, light-bulb cry,
Arms wrapped around the one who had been lost;
The frantic fear that this, like dew, might fade away.
Yet he has arms and can be held. He lives.
(No heart could hope so wild a thing as this.)

The Slow Dawning Part 1: Linen Cloths (Easter Day)

They lie bedraggled in the tomb, alone,
The one the women seek not here to find,
Bandages of death with no-one to bind,
No sting of death left for them to contain
And the spices that they brought no more of use,
 
Only two men outside in fiery white
And a surging in Mary’s heart that slowly says
The one behind her with the living voice
Does more than keep this garden and this tomb
But has rolled back all of death’s dense stones.

Nine Quatrains (Easter Vigil)

I.
And so, the domes and waters in their place,
He made His image-bearers shine His face.
He looked on them and called them very good
Who only trusted what they understood.
 
II.
The domes thrown into disarray to flood
The earth and turn the man of dust to mud.
Yet one remains to carry on the seed;
An olive branch; a bow turned on its head.
 
III.
And in the thicket stands a captured ram,
Where God Himself, he sees, supplied the lamb.
And so the sovereign promise lingers on
For he has not withheld his only son.
 
IV.
Yet, though with outstretched arm and mighty hand
He turns the writhing sea into dry land,
Still they long for Egypt’s comfort food
And turn to dust what once was very good.
 
V.
So over desert sands this call resounds:
To seek the Lord yet while he may be found.
A cry: listen, listen, eat what is good
And let your soul delight in His pure food.
 
VI.
And at the portal’s entrance here she stands
Drawing in the foolish with her hands,
Calling simple ones to come and live
And eat from hands which long always to give.
 
VII.
Though stony hearts stand back and leave the feast,
His breath still calls as far as west from east
And beckons in His once-good people who
Can only offer Him old hearts for new.
 
VIII.
Breathing over valleys of dead bones,
He takes these skeleton remains and turns
The dead into an army marching wide
To bring back to Him those now dead and dried.
 
IX.
And so in broken waiting sing aloud
For He who gathers waters in the clouds
Gathers in the outcast and the lame
And fashions praises out of our dead shame.

The Second Day (Holy Saturday)

Probably the first “liturgical” poem that I wrote was on Easter Saturday about six years ago. I had recently read Bruce Dawe’s marvellous “And a Good Friday was had by all” and, having been struck by the immediacy of his language and the power of his imagery, I felt moved to write something similar. I began by wondering: how would the disciples have felt while waiting out that Sabbath immediately after Jesus’ death? How, in particular, would Peter have felt, knowing that he had betrayed his Lord, not knowing how it would all turn out, having to his knowledge no opportunity to remedy what he had done?
 
It wasn’t an especially good poem, but it started me on a process of imaginatively approaching Scripture and using poetry as a means of doing this, a practice which is now a regular part of my life. Today’s poem, another Easter Saturday piece, recalls some of those original thoughts about what it might have meant to wait and rest on what must have been for Jesus’ followers the most painful and disappointing of Sabbaths.
 
The Second Day (Holy Saturday)
 
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(Collect of the Day)
 
The tree is felled, but its stump remains,
           Waiting, in the soil.
And we in our waiting sing muted refrains,
The cries of parched soil longing for rain
            And waiting in our toil…
 
The branch that grew from Jesse is severed;
            The Sabbath sits in tears.
Jerusalem’s daughter, still undelivered,
Looks silent on her rotting vineyard
            And mourns her broken years.
 
And Jonah’s sign lies buried in the deep;
           The whale’s belly churns.
The women beat their breasts while hope, asleep,
Lies in the earth with promises to keep;
            The week adjourns…
 
Could we, in our weeping, call this to mind,
            Like dew on each new day?
Never-ceasing steadfast love still binds
Us in its grasp which, ever-knowing, finds
            Us when we turn away?
 
The tree is felled, but its stump remains,
            Waiting for the dawn.
And we in our Sabbath sing muted refrains,
Longing faintly for our king who reigns
            Through every crying morn…