Good Friday

TWO THIEVES

1.
We’re three dark animals they’ve finally treed.
For now the man in charge gets what he sought;
An illustration. Perhaps we’ll plant a seed:
Don’t heal or steal or preach. Or don’t get caught.

And so in terror of our good example
One boy in the crowd averts his eyes,
Reads holy books. A look’s not always ample.
Once, a gangling boy upon that rise

I saw what comes of passions lashed to bone
And—knowing all they said I should have known—
I turned with ears unstopped to each extreme.

In three days crows will feast upon these eyes
That saw more of the world than most men dream.
Maybe after eating they’ll grow wise.

2.
My father was a mercenary Greek,
My mother was a slave. Disinclined
To work I plied my trade till just last week,
A veteran with one leg bound up behind

Living on men’s guilt; Jehovah’s wrath.
I’d limp home past the guard with my own life
Each night to my stupendous cure: a bath
And afterward some absent merchant’s wife

In need of vast attentions. The town I sacked
Room by scented room’s beneath my heel.
I never heard you speak. To be exact
When housewives went to hear you I would steal.

And now you empty out your sacred heart
Who, just before the blow, stayed Abraham.
Graves yawn. The dead are seen to start.
Wind wrestles in the thicket like a ram.

Mr. Peperium

Comments

[Old Dominion Tory]

Is this your work, Mr. Peperium? If so, it's quite good. If not, it's a nice choice.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Yes Old Dominion. It is Mr. P's own poem.

[frml]

Really impressive work, Mr P. Extraordinary.
frml

[Father M.]

Mr. P.,
A holy and fitting meditation for Good Friday.

[Mr. Peperium]

Thank you Old Dominion, frml and Father M for your very generous comments. Mark Twain once said he could live for two months on a good compliment, so I should be ok until somewhere around the first of June.

Religious poetry is the hardest kind to write; I've often wondered at George Herbert's facility for writing nothing else but pious meditations that are never cloying or obvious. I think it has alot to do with the culture one lives in; Herbert or Donne or Dante or The Pearl Poet inhabited cultures where Christianity were the stock in trade of every thinking person's mind. Even Chaucer's Wyfe of Bath, so famous for her salacious stances, grounds her arguments in Scripture. Mrs. P quoted Eliot the other day declaring the collapse of Christendom; I'm afraid he was right. But he also said we must redeem the time, which I guess includes such various activities as trying to raise children who know the Faith and occassionally writing some verse.

[Christine]

Mr. P,
The last stanza is particularly nice--the last line especially. I like how the reference to Abraham contrasts Christ's omnipotence with His complete vulnerability on the Cross. "Wind wrestles in the thicket like a ram" gives closure in a wonderfully vivid and powerful way; bravo on a perfect ending.

[Mr. Peperium]

Thank you very much, Christine. I'm delighted the lines bear such a reading and I shouldn't be surprised. Typology was one of the things that won me over to the Faith. (My favorite instance is David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant and John leaping in Elizabeth's womb.) Bring up a Type and the resonances can't help being struck. That God would go through with a sacrifice He spared us from making always blows me away.

I like the last line too; it drives home the point that, unlike Abraham and his son, there is no substitute to fall back on.

[Misspent]

This isn't an Easter post so this comment doesn't quite blong, but Happy Easter everyone! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!!!