grief – poem prayer silence

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)

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/

The Virgin and the Angel, Holy Saturday

Go away.
I do not want your cheap consolation.
You are too beautiful in your flaming robes.
What do you know of death and loss?
That is for you to teach me.
I have not come to speak this time
But to sit in silence
Watching out the night.

My God, my God!
Would that I had died instead of you,
My son, my son.
Yes.

The moon is rising, it’s getting cold.
He is beyond reach of cold now in his dark hole.
Hush, hush. These strange human tears wound me like stones.

He suffered and served you for this?
Where was the flaming chariot, why
Did you abandon him to sorrow and grief?
Yes.

Was he anointed for affliction
My innocent boy, disfigured
Struck down by God – oh.
Yes.

Is that it? Isaiah?
‘The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all’?

Very well. I think I understand
But let me alone a little longer
To weep for him
It’s still hard for me, my Lord.
Hush, hush. Let them flow.

Let me tell you a story, my Lady,
one you already know.
When Israel escaped at the Red Sea
and the chariots and horsemen were drowned
we burning ones began to sing before the Glory
and he said
‘The work of my hands is drowned in the sea,
and you would offer me a song?’
And we saw the tears of the Holy One, blessed be He.

What are you telling me?
Does my Lord weep with all who weep
And suffer agony in cruel death
Is it on Him the chastisement of our sin is laid?
You saw him bear it royally upon the cross.
Him? My boy? Messiah yes, but this is blasphemy.

Have you forgotten that night filled with angels
When he was born?
Hidden in your nature
Emptied of glory the Glory walked
Overflowing with love like tears.

Yes. I know it now, so I can let him go
In peace back to his heavenly mansion.
Do not smile.
What more have I not understood?
No, do not tell me. I am very weary
And no longer young. I will sleep now.
Sleep, my Lady. You will see him tomorrow.

tRuth 2002

NB the story Gabriel tells can be found in the Talmud, Megillah 10b and Sanhedrin 39b.

image Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Lament

I peel the onion
-did she like onions?-
greenish-white, translucent, familiar.
I slice layer after layer,
packed tight like cause and consequence,
like bolts in a bomb.
What possibilities were packed in her,
what hopes, what understanding
of her place in life?
Such a small place.
Who can know
what dreams she might have lived into reality
-did she finish her library book?-
The relentless round of meals rolls on
without her: little Saffie’s dead.

tRuth 2017

This poem is in memory of Saffie Rose Roussos, aged 8, the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing of 22nd May 2017. But it could stand for so many others killed by violence, all over the world.

Easter evening

The choirs have gone home, and in the grey spring
Dusk the church grows still. The coals
That glowed red in the thurible are dimming
While belated incense falls in veils
Like mist in quiet fields at evening.

The resurrection songs have sounded bright
And joyful in the morning, but the pale
Hospice patient will not last the night.
Death still reigns this side of the veil
And bitter loss like icy rain, like blight.

But the outrage that we feel at death is pointing
To the fact that love outlasts the body’s death.
Reality wears veils, and hiding, hinting
Shows truth too big to grasp, like breath
Of incense clouds evoking light that’s glinting

Just out of sight, where other songs resound
Beyond the veil, a place that yet is strange.
When at twilight our turn comes around
To part the mists, though everything is changed,
Familiar voices welcome us as found.

tRuth 2018

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