Anam Cara

Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief

Of belonging to what cannot be seen.

Soon she can no longer bear to be alone.

At dusk she takes the road into the hills.

An anxious moon doubles her among the stone.

A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.

Two women locked in a story of birth.

Each mirrors the secret the other heard.

 

THE NATIVITY

 

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.

Even the moon leaves her when she opens

Deeper into the ripple in her womb

That encircles dark to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her.

A face deciphers itself from water

And she curves around the gathering wave,

Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,

She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.

A red wire of pain feeds through every vein

Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first.

Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

 

THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE

 

The words of a secret have rivet eyes

That cannot sleep to forget what they know.

The restrained voice sharpens to an arrow

That will reach its target through any disguise.

Two old people wait in the temple shadows

Where stone and air are hoarsened with prayer

For some door to open in their hunger;

Sometimes children laugh at her twitching nose.

Worn to a thread the old man’s rope of days,

Spent unravelling in this empty torment,

Has wizened his silence to words of flint.

When he glimpses the child, his lost voice flares.

His words lodge in the young mother’s thought

That a sword of sorrow will pierce her heart.

 

THE FINDING IN THE TEMPLE

 

Oblique to the heart, the word a man seeks

Seldom comes to life in a tongue of flame

From the grate of silence where anger dreams

And stutters in embers thought cannot reach.

When the voice remains fettered, it grows cold

All over the neighbourhood of the word.

In the heart distance cries out to be heard,

When night burns with the face of the beloved.

He is old, yet still betrothed to her dream

That took their home into its possession.

He dwells beside her, anxious and alone.

Hopes when this ends, he will reach her again.

They search the crowd for the child who is gone.

He tells the strangers that it is his son.

 

The Sorrowful Mysteries

 

THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN

 

Whatever veil of mercy shrouds the dark

Wound that stops weeping in no one, cannot

Stop the torrent of night when it buries thought

And heart beneath the black tears of the earth.

Through scragged bush the moon discovers his face,

Dazed inside the sound of Gethsemane,

Subsiding under the weight of silence

That entombs the cry of his terrified prayer.

What light could endure the dark he entered?

The void that turns the mind into a ruin

Haunted by the tattered screeching of birds

Who nest deep in hunger that mocks all care.

Still he somehow stands in that nothingness;

Raising the chalice of kindness to bless.

 

THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR

 

When we love we love to touch the beloved.

Our hands find joy in the surprise of skin.

Here is where tenderness is uncovered.

Few frontiers hold a world more wondrous in.

Imagine the anger of their disturbance.

They cannot bear the portals his words create.

Helpless, turned inside out by his presence,

Sheltering from themselves as a crowd irate.

Made to face the pillar, the wrists bind him

Under the shadow of the angel of pain,

Who flogs, and waits, prefers a broken rhythm,

Until his back becomes a red text of shame.

His mind holds to the images of those he loves;

While his frightened skin swells under the scourge.

 

THE CROWNING WITH THORNS

 

The thorns woven to your head are nothing

Like the emptiness loosening your mind

From the terse mountains where you served your time

Seeking the hearth in the loneliness of things.

Then that slow glimpse of three faces concresced

In a circle of infinitely gentle gaze

Trusting each thing out of air into form,

Showed you belong to this first tenderness.

You earth divine flame in a young man’s frame.

Things rush your senses offering their essence.

Now the earth clenches against you, cold and closed

In a yard forsaken by every name.

On crucifixion duty, bored with routine

The soldiers start mocking and crown you king.

 

THE CARRYING OF THE CROSS

 

A kiss on the back of the neck tingles,

Almost sound, a breath of music in bone.

It is here they laid the heavy crossbeam,

Each step a thud inward like sick thunder.

It invades his head. All silence leaves him.

Stooped forward he watches his innocent feet

Search each step for sure ground to take the weight.

He falls face first on the broken pavement.

Those he knows to see will not meet his eyes.

They fear his gaze might unleash misfortune.

Sweat down his back opens a line of wounds.

A white towel absorbs a mirage of his face.

Windows open in the crowd, his heart rends

At the weeping of his mother and friends.

 

THE CRUCIFIXION

 

When at last it comes, it comes in silence;