The Women Who Stayed
we're coming back with myrrh
Tarkovsky’s Icon1
The imagination of men is dark.
Their capacity for evil?
Unplumbed.
An endless excavation of oppression,
unearthing
new worlds of hurting
to inflict on one another.
The power of violence is
her power to silence.
What hard-hearted poet pens
sonnets in the face of torture?
Cries of mangled innocents inspire
strangled melodies,
Here's sin’s horror:
Our voices, made for psalming,
fall mute.
But,
when one man,
living from the heart of lavish instinct,
stoops down to hold his brother's broken body,
cradling each bruise and scar,
tenderly,
when brother’s pain paints likeness
on brother’s shrouding body,
a deep magic peals,
washing our wretched-weary world
in fresh rains of colors,
releasing our mute tongues—
sing! soft clappers, make our mouths
ring—
praising bright beauty in
their dark world.
Long Winter of 1888-89
Uncle! we cry, claiming asylum
in twilight sunlight,
vernal sanctuary for we
who have gnawed winter’s bone of meat,
bitten off our fingernails,
gifted our ears to milkmaids
sliced by the yuletide winds of Arles.
Frostbite of February indecision
blues impatient Delacroix attempting painted pietas.
He fails.
Vincent smothers scars in
Colors, running from a winter-ravaged brain,
spilling through spiral sluices,
gluttonous gashes of gauche
coating canvases in
thick-troughed whorls of life.
Drink deeply come March,
greet them, Theo, the zephyrs of sunlight,
and wells of certainty pooling in the yard.
O sunflowers,
grant mercy to minds thawing
from January freeze.
The Women Who Stayed
“We were moms, we used painter’s tape,”
A subversive group—
The women who stayed.
who stayed behind in kitchens
baking bread from the
first supper to the last,
who gave their treasure
to the God who
gave all his away.
They did not run that Friday,
They walked with him.
Sobbed, wailed, as his blood—
the wine they gave—
gushed from wounds,
through gutters,
emptied into the grave
They had invested in this man.
they had faith—believed,
credemus—good credit.
They insisted for return on that investment.
If you must die, then
They said,
You’ll die a king
We won’t let the city crush you,
We can’t allow
annihilation.
You’re our God and we didn’t raise you
to fall like this.
After all we’ve done for you—this is
your gratitude?
Get up! Arise!
When we come back
we’re bringing myrrh,
and your sepulcher
had better be
tidy, clean, and empty.
Originally in Jesus the Imagination, Volume III
Beautiful!