Author: tRuth

Resurrection

As the glad phoenix from his spicy bed
Bursts in vermilion splendour, as the bright
Sudden lightning-flash and orange-red
And leaping flames light up the night:

So is the thunder-clap of Jesus’ rising.
Consternation, joy, amazement all together
Confound us, shake us open for surprising
Truth to penetrate. HE IS RISEN – whether

Or not I believe it, he is truly living,
Unconstrained now, loving without limit,
Only my refusal may frustrate his giving.

But Gód’s blazing glory is beyónd what I can guess,
Negativity or evil cannot hinder, cannot dim it,
For his fire will enfold me and transmute me into Yes.

 

tRuth 2019

Chrism mass

A mass of chrism and the other oils
In little bottles, decanted at speed by vergers
While the diocese receives Christ at the bishop’s hand
And promises again to do his work.
And then they scatter, each with a year’s supply
Of confirmations, death-bed anointings,
Makings of new Christians,
Comfortings of chemotherapy endurers,
Healings of toxic memories.
Here is the risen Christ, in each encounter
With the holy oils, the kindly touch,
The hope unconquered.

 

tRuth 2019

Wednesday of Holy Week

 

Like sea-mist condensing from nowhere
The quiet deepens through the week
As the streets empty. When the blackbird speaks
He wakes an echo in the April evening
That falls as fountains from the air
Back into stillness. So we enter
The great silence, as an otter cleaving
Still water cleanly, and we wait. The centre
Of all things, the Christ mystery, we prepare
Our spacious silence for receiving.
Together we enter his eclipse; a bleak
And seeping sadness chills us into prayer
Like those who loiter in a graveyard early, grieving
Before sunrise. Here we wait, this week.

 

tRuth 2019

Palm Sunday

Today Jesus rides in triumph
through a rain of flowers
to his kingdom, on Brother Ass,
humble and holy, simple and true.
Every day he rides still into his own
on Brother Ass, Brother Body,
the patient, grumbling root
of every spiritual flowering.
Who can find Jesus without Brother Ass to help her?
Who can be real whose Brother Ass has strayed?
Brother, you deserve fine flowers of cherry,
snowdrifts of apple-blossom, to welcome
this Easter king in his holiness.
I like thistles, mumbles Brother Ass,
Yum-yum, thank you. Can you see
my rider now? Yum-yum, thank you.

 

tRuth 2019

St Francis used to refer to his body as Brother Ass. Towards the end of his life he asked pardon of Brother Ass for having behaved so harshly towards it by his overzealous asceticism.

Sabbath

His hands are bound about with linen bands,
Still now, no more with vivid gesture telling
Stories to thrill to; healing, kindly hands,
Their black wounds hidden by the sweetly smelling

Myrrh-soaked bindings. And the women weeping
Have turned away and left him dumbly lying
Like a thing in the darkness, and when the light comes leaping
In the spring dawn, he will still be sleeping.

The day long of lamenting and of crying,
Here he will be, still and cold and lonely,
In his last rest. Where has he gone, the flying

Soaring life of him? Deep down, defying
Death in his den, setting them free, the only
Lord of Life, raising the dead to joy undying.

 

tRuth 2019

image © Liberanapoli CC BY SA 3 (Wikimedia Commons)

Shepherd, night

‘Someone’s got to stay with the sheep,’ they said.
‘You know you’re too slow anyway, old Ebenezer,
If we’re to be back before light,’ they said.
The night is old now too
The sharp winter stars moving smoothly but fast
My bones creak in the cold.
In the fire’s heart the lumps of wood
Are wood no longer but blocks of pulsing red
Fire barely contained in a stick’s skin
Like the strange Spirit of God that leaps sometimes
Inside me on wakeful nights
Till the old man is hardly there at all
But is all consumed by God, so close
As close as the yellow planets hanging in hand’s reach
When the dew glitters on huddled sheep’s backs
In the unearthly starlight.
This child, now, will he be like that?
This promised one, will he burn full of God
Till the brat is consumed in the Spirit
Till one thing, neither fire nor wood but both
Is left? I wish him childhood first
This boy whose manhood I’ll not live to see
Time to doze with the sheep on hot afternoons
To see the sea and crunch the snows of Hermon.
Ah well. Another stick to the fire
And a walk round the breathing, stirring flock.
The new star over Bethlehem is paling now.
Sunrise is near.

 

tRuth 2005

 

image Wikimedia Commons, no copyright

Advent

Tempest: the gnawing gale
Drives the rough sleepers from the seafront,
Sleet splinters flying on the wind’s wail.

Tempus fugit: time flees fast,
Drains away and is gone through fingers
That cling to be safe, cling to what cannot last.

Temper: a sword for its purpose is tried,
And a soul for its truth: what justice from you
For those who have nowhere to bide?

Tempus fugit: time runs out like the sand
When He comes who made time and asks
His searching question of those upon either hand.

 

tRuth 2018

 

image © Robin Stott cc-by-sa/2.0/ http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2160484

 

Advent

Like the bulb beneath the earth: awaken.
Thus God’s urging in the soul’s blood,
the intangible currents of heart-mind:
Awaken.
Something is coming, disturbing
the status quo, the somnolence.
Awaken. Are you ready?
Do you have the tools, the ears,
the nerve-cells yearning for his caress?
Or is your back turned?
What does he bring? What will it do to me?
Questions, questions. Awaken.

 

tRuth 2018

 

There but not there

Six perspex soldiers
Sitting in Evensong
– Holy is the true light and passing wonderful –
Barely there,
Less substantial than shadows,
Just an outline, a thickening of the light
And a winking brightness on ear and shoulder
Where the young men would have sat
Who are gone.
Holy is the true light lending radiance
Making visible the gaps in other lives,
The absence, the grief.
These that endured in the heat of the conflict
Are now translated into light everlasting,
Held in eternity, their mud and blood
Transmuted into rejoicing,
Their might-have-been
Resolved into alleluias.
Yet here below
Where loss and grief are holy
Their absence shows in its true light
Of pain and love together,
Gone but not gone.

 

tRuth 2018

There but not there is a public art project to commemorate the 1918 Armistice.
https://www.therebutnotthere.org.uk

The words in italics are from the text of an anthem by William Harris.

 

image copyright tRuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/