Good Friday

a poem

Good Friday

Αν είσαι ο Χριστός σώσε τον εαυτό σου και εμάς.

“Eloi! Eloi! Lama sabachthani?”

Waiting atop my little fossil hill

Watching the deer walking under oaks,

I am still waiting for the breeze,

Waiting as the air stays still.

Thinking of men uplifted on a rock.

I cannot absolve or bless or consecrate

the one in the middle. I will never be—

nor no one else— a priest ordained

who can commend him to Eloi,

both forsaken and forever blessed.

Another has received his promise today,

a walled garden to keep out bears and eagles.

This very day. Faith and love blow on the hillside

against the waves of hopelessness.

I think of the one uplifted to the left.

Bitter and cursing until the very end

as the light dims and the breath gasps

and shudders, and finally all is still.

The wisteria and mountain laurel

and bluebonnets spread their blue

folds against the stony soil; the yellow

daisies and coreopsis dance like a flag.

To a land far from my home,

The time of war has come again .

Their sacrifice we celebrate;

I do not understand.

Better a Roman slave than a Judean farmer;

worse to have your nation torn in shame—

the logic of empire, towns to raze—

who comes to this hill again?

The will to power, the original fall,

evolution’s tyranny, hungry demons

or whatever the fuck may be the cause—

the men will be dead by sunset.

Two rest in blessings, one dies cursing

at the invaders, at the strangers, at all

the shatter zones of all the nations.

He is the one I’d so much like to save.

“If you are hunting orcs, get them at twilight

As they return on trails they think they know.

Strike quick, chase them to clearings

Where you have readied javelins for slaughter.

Then you can take their gear and run

down narrow paths in the dark”

Once I gave out blessings

to my students, the quiet and meek

and smart ones, and the boy whose

heart was kind and mind was weak.

I had a scoundrel too, sneaky kid

goading others to trouble, but desperate

for a blessing, who kept saying,

“What about me? What about me?”

I think of him as I summon up

a very hard absolution to make,

an epitaph for a Russian soldier

immolated in his truck:

“You are a child of God

and your mother loves you.”

Still. Loves you.

Still. Now.

This very day.

Now—still,

Peace.