Monday, January 14, 2013

The Crucifix


Here He is bound as we are bound; His face
Wears our dumb pain. The Word in silence hangs.
Carved from the stone of our own stony hearts,
Burdened by time, He is the Son of Man.

Here, underneath, the shuffling pilgrims come
To gaze, to wonder, or, indifferent, pass.
See, is there any sorrow like to His,
He, to our torment, the reflective glass?

These eyes left blank to pierce, as He was pierced,
Straight through that place where my soul’s tendons meet,
To separate me from complacency,
Decapitating from my self-conceit.

He has become myself. No words, no song
Lighten the moment. He is there as me,
And I to Him bound fast. Where will this end –
I locked to Him in my small finity?

Under time’s vault there is no certainty,
No neat small calculations to contain
The paths my God will bid me walk with Him.
I only know He carries all my pain.

Even those stretched hands cannot measure out
The boundaries of this vast, alien grace.
I only know that all the love I yearn
Is here configured, uttered in this place.

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