Faithful Grieving

 

Let our tears be honest tears, there is no pretending,

Here, there, or anywhere.

Let the truth be spoken

Starkly, or whispered,

But it must be said.

There must be room for lamentation.

 

Let us be done with the piety of plastered smiles,

Of bravely quivering voices,

Prayers with subtext,

Agendas to rebuild our pedestals

With all the papier-mâché we can cobble,

From our scant treasuries.

Would we be those

Who have their reward already?

(And that’s all.)

 

Let us come

To the olive gardens where the broken kneel.

Let our fragments fall

Without curation;

Finally acknowledging

It doesn’t matter,

And it never did –

Everyone else could always see the mess.

 

There is no healing for sock puppets,

Or marionettes with painted grins,

And staring eyes that cannot shed a tear.

This is not the hour of trumpets.

We are not home yet.

Feet blister,

And the world becomes a burden

Too much for us to lift.

There is more grieving.

In a grain of sand

Than all our measured words.

 

Look in the cracked mirror,

Let its shards cut you!

See how you bleed,

You are not made of cardboard.

He breathed, he spoke, you were.

Live in his image:

A man acquaint with grief!

Walk in his footsteps:

Despised? Rejected? Yes!

And also raised

On the far side of tortured loss and shame:

There is no other path.