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…

The Slowing Year (For John Keble)

My year-long poetry project, “The Swelling Year”, is drawing to a close and will finish shortly after the Easter period ends. Today’s poem signals something of a milestone in the project: the last of the “feast days” for significant Christians remembered in the Anglican calendar. Somewhat appropriately, this poem remembers John Keble, a man whose ideas about church I would not completely see eye-to-eye with but with whom I have a level of kinship because he, like me, wrote poems for most of the days of the Anglican year, in a collection called “The Christian Year”. Today’s poem is based around his Good Friday poem; it does not seem that anyone other than Jesus should be the focal point of a poem today, so I have used this poem to unite Keble’s work and mine around our common Saviour, Jesus Christ.
 
The Slowing Year (For John Keble, Priest)
 
As in all lowly hearts he suffers still,
While we triumphant ride and have the world at will.
(John Keble, “Good Friday”)
 
And so the year goes on, for go it does,
Cycling through its old familiar ways;
We take a breath as this holiest of days
Slows down the motions of our weekly throes,
And hearts consumed with silent dreads and woes
But vaguely turn their twisted, inner gaze
Towards the tree where our Ancient of Days
Hangs, contorted, for a Roman show.
 
If we could pause the swelling of our years
Enough to let our wounds rest in his wounds,
We might find hiding places for our shame
And tissue torn to daub up all our tears.
There all our sorrows sound their sweetest tunes
Within the broken triumph of his Name.

The Soul’s Travail (Good Friday)

After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
(Isaiah 53:11)
 
High and lifted up
Astonishing the faithless many
Kings with mouths agape yet shut
And hearts with closed fists
 
Lifted high above
The place of skulls and taunting
Elevated by his grief
The arm of God revealed…
 
Despised and rejected
Nothing to his form to draw
Our eyes up to him, yet he is
Now lifting, high, to breathe
 
And all now see
His final breath of life upon
The gaping, gawking many who
Do not know who he is
 
Breathe life:
His soul now stretches, its travail
Dragging nail-torn limbs across
The branches of the earth
 
Reach out and draw
All life unto yourself and give
Your every breath to see this light;
Your soul is satisfied…

One Day

This poem isn’t much more than the literary equivalent of doodling. But it is the first night of the school holidays, the eve of Good Friday (and with it the night before a church service which I am contributing some poetry for), and the end of a difficult week emotionally, so I felt in need of some writing to help me get my head straight. This poem is an attempt to do just that. I hope you enjoy it.
 
One Day
 
I wonder if, one day, we could find a place
Where the nettles of spring do not bite us,
Where the trees sing songs of comfort and peace
And I do not flee from these flowers.
 
I wonder if one day, amidst these thick hours,
I might face down the wildest of seas
And take in the birds’ fluid motion of flight as
They swoop in their orbit of grace.
 
Perhaps; though my mind so often devours
Itself in these cycles, these cries of unease,
All the flowers of the sea turned to detritus,
Short seasons of triumph to disgrace.
 
Perhaps; then the anguish of my every pace
Might lift and the sea’s soft rhythm requite us,
Midst the cooing of seagulls, the swaying of trees,
The safety of love and its towers.

Unblemished Lamb (Maundy Thursday)

Not all of you are clean, he said:
A glance that spoke no judgment, though
He saw us to the core.
Instead, with all things under him,
He wrapped a towel around his waist
And knelt before our feet.

But Peter, stubborn to the last,
Declared, Lord, you can’t wash my feet!
The servant was not greater than
The master who knelt down.
If I do not wash your feet, he said,
You have no part in me.

Judas, feet now cleansed but soul
Abstaining still from the feast,
Kept his lintel clean from blood
But smeared it on his hands and heart;
The lamb without a blemish wept
And Judas walked outside.

Not all of you are clean, he said;
The basin shook from Judas’ steps
And while we whispered, Lord, not I?
The Spirit, unseen, passed over us,
Saw the pure, unblemished lamb
And saw our filth made clean.

The Wounded Servant (Wednesday in Holy Week)

Sustaining the weary with a word,
There were none who would come to him
That he would turn aside.

Morning by morning his ear awoke
To hear the cries of the small and weak,
The beaten and the bruised.

And beaten and bruised, he turned his back
To take their lashes, and turned his cheek
To take their spit and spite.

And he turned his cheek to take the kiss
Of the friend who caught the High Priest’s eye
And sold him for silver coins.

He set his face like flint towards shame
And took a crown that pierced his brow,
His throne a place of skulls.

His obedience plumbed the darkest depths,
His mercy a gift of bleeding love;
Glory springs from his shame.

Children of Light (Tuesday in Holy Week)

           Arise, little ones.
Though in your smallness you cannot see
Beyond the faint horizon:
 
He comes, he comes,
Across the seas,
Bearing light upon his brow.
 
To those despised deeply,
Abhorred by the world,
He comes bearing folly, to weaken the wise;
 
He sweeps the vast coastlands,
His mouth is a sword,
Yet he will not lift his voice.
 
And silently he falls to soil,
A kernel, broken, to spread its seed
And bring in a harvest of plenty.
 
           Arise, little ones:
He takes in the weak, beleaguered and small
And makes them children of light.

The Former Things (Monday in Holy Week)

        See –
 
He who stretched the heavens out with His hands
And spread out the earth and all it contains,
Whose breath fills our lungs with infinitude,
Who beckons us in with His arms –
 
He sees the smouldering wick in the dark
And the reed that has been bruised too many times;
He sees the blind and the dungeon-bound
And the hopeless cases of dawn.
 
       He sees
 
And His arms know how to stretch out
To draw us in and encompass our wounds;
He sees and He falls lower than us
And does not grasp hold of His throne.
 
See Him ride, a king bound for death,
Eyes set on that city of misconstrued peace,
Where the broken are scourged and the bruised are now laden
With new yokes and burdens to carry;
 
       See Him reach
 
With arms bent on grace, a king of deep wounds,
A man well-acquainted with sorrows and grief
Who erases the former things with each step
And ushers hope into the past.

The Annunciation

And so this is our sign,
To those with hard and opened hearts
Within the heights and deepest depths,
This then is our sign:

The virgin shall have a child;
She who is small in your proud eyes
Shall bring forth what the world can’t hold,
What human eyes can’t see.

This then is the sign
That will make you weep and make you sing,
Will drive kings to their caves in fear,
Though he rides in on a colt.

I am the Lord’s servant,
The handmaiden says, to the angel’s blaze
And though a sword will pierce her soul,
She magnifies the Lord.

Octave for Unity (For Paul Couturier, Ecumenist)

And in His body we are all made one
      And pray by day and night that we may be,
      As He prayed for us in Gethsemane:
One body, shining in Him like the sun.
 
If we have any comfort, consolation
       From being in Him, this then is our plea:
       That when the world looks on us, let them see
The mind of Christ within us, every one.