Stigmatic: a poem for Good Friday

[Years ago I read an account of someone—at this distance I don’t even remember who—receiving the stigmata. The detail that has stayed with me ever since was that the wounds did not come all at once, but gradually developed over several months.]   You pierced me slowly, Lord. An itch at first. Mere irritation. Then four sores. Blood seeping, Staining sock and shirt. Skin scraped away as if by Sandpaper. Why not the quick urgent thrust of a lover Breaking my virgin skin with rush of blood? Penetration completed in a moment. As swift as when nails impaled you. Your mining as ponderous and painstaking As an archeological dig. Pits Excavated in my extremities With excruciating exactness. Pressing imperceptibly deeper Precise, damaging no bones. At last you break the further skin and It is finished, your languid lancing. Four fleshy tunnels oozing gore. Flies find passage through me. Strange and sluggish God, Lord of the fords of Jabbok, Why is it that You wound all those you love? A rough wooing, yours, that Leaves us scarred and limping. And the exquisite extension of your Infliction of injury! You could shatter my hip in a second But you wait till the night-wrestle is done. What did you discover As you dug into me? What did you uncover Between muscle fibres Behind bones Beneath veins? You are the God who sees; What did you want to show when You laid me more than bare? Or are the hurts my own? My Malignant mind, my agonistic soul So fixed on the pains that were yours that I have etched them into my flesh, Deeper and sorer than any tattoo? Is it our malformed love for you that cripples us, O God of Jacob? Is there so much pain in your penumbra that To draw near is to suffer? Is it our own distortions that Break us in your light? Your glory has Gored me. Your beauty has Broken me. Your grace has Gutted me. Is it masochism that drives me to seek you still? ‘Through death you have trampled down Death’. ‘Your wounds in Beauty glorified.’ Through this long Good Friday I choose To wait For a mountain Moved. For an answer Unimagined. For the repeal of An execution. For a vivified Corpse. You have tunnelled through my body. You have undermined my soul. Distorted. Partial. Broken. I see a displaced stone. I see discarded rags. I see an empty cave. I put my hope in absence. I cannot see you. I cannot not...

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Irregular Hope: Seven Stanzas for Christmas

Irregular Hope: Seven Stanzas for Christmas   1. Epiphany Thrice fourteen men and Just three women named Between Ur and Nazareth. The men are rapists, murderers, Incestuous, adulterers, and the rest. We read and note the female lives To be irregular.   2. Benedictus Pretending to have Dreamt. Straining to Forget. Then the blood Fails to flow. Young enough Still to be irregular She tries to hope For two weeks more.   3. Annunciation His voice controlled. Effort Etched into his neck. He searches for civility. ‘But how? It all seems … Most irregular.’ She fails to hope Until he dreams her reality.   4. Quickening Her belly soon begins to Swell. Straining to contain the One who fills time, space. One day she prays. Between Her kidneys prayer is heard. Omnipotence awakes; She feels it kick.   5. Nunc Dimittis An unremitting sun and A dusty track and A troubled fiancé add To the weight that Hangs from the Front of her torso. At least the donkey’s gait is regular.   6. Nativity Of course, where Animals live the Straining of females and the Crying of newborns is All quite regular. New life brings new hope And blood-sodden straw.   7. Advent Mucus gives way. Waters descend. Sweat dilutes urine. On this moment the world balances. The Spasms that pull her apart Become more regular. She subsides. Here is hope: The Word which spoke light is heard again.  ...

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At Lazarus’s Tomb: An Easter poem

He wept, the man who I had learned to trust, And spoke: ‘he who believes will never die.’ My brother, who for four dead days did lie, Rose, stripped, and lived again. This we discussed Endlessly – how could we not? The years went by He married, prospered, then, as all men must Grew old. He stooped and sickened. Returned to dust. And now once more we watch his tomb and cry. ‘The resurrection and the life’ he said, But I await the last of days again. ‘Though die, will live’ – strange words he spoke, and hard; What has he changed, who on the cross once bled? He rose. And rose. Made gates of death, through pain, A door held open by the hands still scarred.

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‘Manhood and Deity’: Two sonnets for Christmas

A pair – and they are a pair – of Christmas poems:   1. Manhood: Joseph You paint me in the shadows, left of scene. His shining light there blocked by ox. Or third King. Or by ass like me. My face is blurred Lest I distract from Jesus and Mary.   Oh, ‘I’m not Hamlet, nor was meant to be’ ‘Attendant lord’ am I, attendant on my Lord— My son (or so I say: obedient word, That masks the uselessness I feel in me.)   This all my calling, all my sanctity To stand detached and silent, unpreferred. My voice? A butler’s, asking concierge On their account, not mine, ‘Pray, room have ye?’   Care? No! I know as well as know my fate: ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’     2. ‘These are the generations’: Deity God’s being, act. The act of life. Adored By all creation—act is deity That is before, beyond, above what He Has made, surveyed, and loved, who is named Lord.   Eternal generation the act is. Revered By hosts of heaven who perfectly do see The life of God the Holy Trinity One begets, one is begotten, and a Third   Who holds them both in unity assured. One act, one triune life eternally Most blessed. A second generation we Confess: in Virgin’s womb we find the Word:   In heaven the One in Three lives, loves, and reigns; On earth the eternal Son is born...

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On the Incarnation: Four Chalcedonian Sonnets

‘Haec et mea fides est quando haec est catholica fides’ (Aug. De Trin., I.iv.7) 1. Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius  ‘Mother of God’ the Fathers said, and we, If we in faith with them are still to stand, Must say the same. The One born of Mary Is God in truth, united with a man. God – of the Father before all time born; Man of his mother, late in time he comes. God unchanging, not by suff’ring torn; Man in flesh and soul united with the Son. This union wondrous comes not late in life But in the womb occurs at once. And so The Holy Mother does not just bear Christ, But God the Word himself in her does grow.   In pain she pushes God, to this world come; Honour the mother, then, to confess the Son.     2. Cyril’s Synodical letter to John of Antioch ‘Mother of God she is’ – this was my cry, And all that I stepped forward to defend. Some claim – laugh at them – that I say that He Brought flesh from heaven; let this lie now end. Mother of God she is, so then how can The nature she births be not hers? So know That in the one true faith with you I stand Confession shared, the Church at peace, and so Agree do we about the made-man Son – Two natures, come together in Him – but Not mix’d, not mingled – yet the Son is one; One Christ; one Lord, united and uncut.   Christ’s church on earth knows peace. We are at one Just as two natures are in God’s own Son.     3. The Tome of Pope Leo The creed will teach – the gospels too – the faith On which alone all our salvation rests: Two natures met together, come to birth, The one person of our Saviour most blest. Each nature acts by its own property – But each co-op’rates in the other’s works – So strength meets weakness; death, eternity; Miracles shine in one; one feels its hurts. All this for us – our need, our guilt. From her Most blest he took form, but he took not fault; So taking our nature from his mother He could suffer – salvation the result.   Our hope of life is found nowhere but He Who alone could suffer impassibly.     4. The Definition of Chalcedon In Godhead perfect; in humanity Perfect too. One Son, our Lord Christ Jesus; A rational soul and body has he; And so he is consubstantial with us, Like us in ev’ry way – except our sin Alone. Consubstantial with the Father Too, born before all ages had begun; Born now of Mary, Virgin, God’s mother. Two natures, then, united in person; No change, no mixture of the natures two; No split, and nor is there separation; One hypostasis only does ensue.   Prophets and Fathers alike have taught us this: In him meet heav’n and earth with holy kiss.   Where are these from? Well, for several years, when I have taught on the Christological debates of the early fifth century, I have challenged the students to summarise some of the key documents in a tweet – the point being to test their ability to cut through to the heart of what the text was about. Each year, there would be a student or two who affected to be above tweeting, and my standard rejoinder was, ‘You can do it in a Petrarchan sonnet instead if you like!’ Somewhere along the line, I started thinking about that, originally flippant, comment… The above are Shakespearian, not Petrarchan, sonnets; I needed the extra rhymes (‘one’ ‘Son’ ‘union’ ‘homoousion’ works, but gets repetitive…). I’ve tried to focus on the doctrine, not the history. The documents chosen are those declared canonical by the Council of Chalcedon ; I’ve not treated Cyril’s third letter, declared canonical at Ephesus. A merry Christmas to all readers of this...

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