Good Friday Poems

“The Coming” by R. S. Thomas
 
And God held in his hand
A small globe.  Look he said.
The son looked.  Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour.  The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
               On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky.  Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs.  The son watched
Them.  Let me go there, he said.

“Gethsemane” by Mary Oliver

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet, and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole
body, and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree,
and didn't move, maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not keep that vigil, how they must have
wept,

so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.

"Descending Theology: The Garden”
By Mary Karr

We know he was a man because, once doomed,
he begged for reprieve. See him
grieving on his rock under olive trees,
his companions asleep
on the hard ground around him
wrapped in old hides.
Not one stayed awake as he’d asked.
That went through him like a sword.
He wished with all his being to stay
but gave up
bargaining at the sky. He knew
it was all mercy anyhow,
unearned as breath. The Father couldn’t intervene,
though that gaze was never
not rapt, a mantle around him. This
was our doing, our death.
The dark prince had poured the vial of poison
into the betrayer’s ear,
and it was done. Around the oasis where Jesus wept,
the cracked earth radiated out for miles.
In the green center, Jesus prayed for the pardon
of Judas, who was approaching
with soldiers, glancing up—as Christ was—into
the punctured sky till his neck bones
ached. Here is his tear-riven face come
to press a kiss on his brother.

“Pilate’s Wife” by Cynthia Erlandson

I’ve had a nightmare! Let that just man go!
You’re right that he’s done nothing wrong. They’re wrong
To want him dead. No, nothing you could write
Above his head could possibly undo
Your guilt. He’s innocent, however long
You try to wash your hands of him. That rite

Is cowardly, since you know what is true.
You’ve said yourself, the power is yours. So do
What’s right. If you do not release him, know
That all the horror I beheld last night
Will fall on you.

“Ecce Homo” by ANDREW HUDGINS

Christ bends, protects his groin. Thorns gouge his forehead, and his legs
are stippled with dried blood. The part of us that’s Pilate says, Behold the man.
We glare at that bound, lashed,
and bloody part of us that’s Christ. We laugh, we howl, we shout. Give us Barabbas,
not knowing who Barabbas is, not caring.
A thief? We’ll take him anyway. A drunk?
A murderer? Who cares? It’s better him
Than this pale ravaged thing, this god. Bosch knows. His humans waver, laugh, then change to
demons
as if they’re seized by epilepsy. It spreads
from eye to eye, from laugh to laugh until,
incited by the ease of going mad,
they go. How easy evil is! Dark voices sing,
You can be evil or you can be good,
but good is dull, my darling, good is dull.
And we’re convinced: How lovely evil is!
How lovely hell must be! Give us Barabbas!
Lord Pilate clears his throat and tries again:
I find no fault in this just man.
It’s more than we can bear. In gothic script

our answer floats above our upturned eyes.
O crucify, we sing. O crucify him!

III Jesus falls the first time by Malcom Guite

He made the stones that pave the roads of Zion
And well he knows the path we make him tread
He met the devil as a roaring lion
And still refused to turn these stones to bread,
Choosing instead, as Love will always choose,
This darker path into the heart of pain.
And now he falls upon the stones that bruise
The flesh, that break and scrape the tender skin.
He and the earth he made were never closer,
Divinity and dust come face to face.
We flinch back from his via dolorosa,
He sets his face like flint and takes our place,
Staggers beneath the black weight of us all
And falls with us that he might break our fall.

“And a Good Friday Was Had by All"
By BRUCE DAWE

You men there, keep those women back

and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and Old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind’s not your own once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex
well this Nazarene
didn’t make it any easier
really – not like the ones
who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
Silenus held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking
on the downswing trying hard not to hear over the women’s wailing the bones give way the iron
shocking the dumb wood.
Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand – we had a drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he
wasn’t a patch on you
then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him
and the curious ones who’ll watch anything if it’s free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.

“Descending Theology: The Crucifixion”
by Mary Karr

To be crucified is first to lie down
on a shaved tree, and then to have oafs stretch you out
on a crossbar as if for flight, then thick spikes
fix you into place.
Once the cross pops up and the pole stob
sinks vertically in an earth hole perhaps
at an awkward list, what then can you blame for hurt
but your own self’s burden?
You’re not the figurehead on a ship. You’re not
flying anywhere, and no one’s coming to hug you.
You hang like that, a sack of flesh with the hard
trinity of nails holding you into place.

Thus hung, your ribcage struggles up
to breathe until you suffocate, give up the ghost.
If God permits this, one wonders how
this twirling earth
manages to navigate the gravities and star tugs.
Or if some less than loving watcher
watches us scuttle across the boneyard greens
under which worms
seethe and the front jaws of beetles
eventually clasp toward the flesh of every beloved.
The man on the cross under massed thunderheads feels
his soul leak away,
then surge. Some windy authority lures him higher
till an unseen tear in the sky’s membrane is rent,
and he’s streaming light, snatched back, drawn close,
so all loneliness ends.

“The Crucifixion” by Steve Turner

You were one with the Father.
Then the Father turned his back on you.
You felt forsaken,
hanging there between heaven's thunder
and the dank spittle of earth.
For that moment you belonged nowhere.
You were love, cut off from love;
truth nailed down by lies.
You must have wanted to explode, to disintegrate,
to disappear into a void.
But that was forbidden.
And that was the test.
Your blood burst through your skin
and ran down like sweat.
Your sweat ran cold
and drained into your heart.
The universe caught hold of your pain.
The sun went blind with grief.
The earth shivered in shock.
History was torn in two.
I stood at a distance,
my collar turned up,
like a murderer witnessing
a wrongful arrest.

XIII Jesus’ body is taken down from the cross

Malcolm Guite

His spirit and his life he breathes in all
Now on this cross his body breathes no more

Here at the centre everything is still
Spent, and emptied, opened to the core.
A quiet taking down, a prising loose
A cross-beam lowered like a weighing scale
Unmaking of each thing that had its use
A long withdrawing of each bloodied nail,
This is ground zero, emptiness and space
With nothing left to say or think or do
But look unflinching on the sacred face
That cannot move or change or look at you.
Yet in that prising loose and letting be
He has unfastened you and set you free.