A Gospel of Death and Life

His Mother Mary’s Lamentation

It’s not because you’ve gone;

it is because you are still there

in my unbearably happy memories;

so, I had to shake off that dust

that may have clung to shoes on your feet

and leave every person who will repeat

your words, your deeds,

because they only suffer your absence.

I had to depart those familiar streets;

but, one day each Spring I will go there again

to remember your terrible death,

then two days later, imagine you arisen,

walking alongside me,

one of my hands on your broad shoulder,

the other in your confident palm

that tightens gently, as you smile, as you laugh.

For those three days, I will try to recall everything.

Some say you’re far beyond the clouds,

sitting in eternal heaven,

others say you still appear to them;

but I know that you were broken,

made rotten, became the dust.

that’s kicked up by our feet,

that we wipe from our faces,

that we breathe in

with your words, your deeds,

your love.

2023.

Peter’s last session with a counsellor

The dream I told you about in our first session –

a sword in my hand, on the grass a severed ear –

I see now was part of my unresolved anger

at the priests, and despair that their maids

and servants, their admirers and hired men

had heard my denials and crowed at my fear.

The one I abandoned – whom they abused –

boldly testified and then forgave even those

who didn’t want to know what happened.

He rose up, unrecognisable to friends

whilst I was still running, unclothed, ashamed,

afraid he’d return, revealing his scars.

He is gone now, ascended to higher things.

Sometimes, counsellor you remind me of him

as a wise gardener, a hiker walking my journey,

a beach-comber calling me when I was tired

to sit and watch waves by a fire, though you are

requiring a fee, constrained by the hour.

He said I am a rock and for his truth

I will stand immovable; yet I will be

a Galilean seabird, feet plopping

on the unfathomable; I will settle

in the temple, preach to priests and hired men

and forgive myself by forgiving them.

2025

Breakfast, 3rd July 2009

Turning to the paper’s middle pages

I’m reminded that forty years ago

those men were sent in such a fragile craft

that President Nixon rehearsed a speech

to tell us they wouldn’t be coming back.

Buzz had brains of a rocket scientist

and the courage of a fighter pilot;

Neil Armstrong was a leader with the faith,

I think, of an archbishop and Michael

Collins could wait alone knowing some things

can’t be helped.  And you

I hadn’t expected to see you

on the front of the newspaper.

I had always thought that you’d come back

laughing with stories and Pashtun carpets

to hide the sadder moments, maybe,

a sense of disquiet, well perhaps,

but I thought you’d be back from Helmand.

I still have the Billy Bragg cassette

you lent me at Sandhurst; you liked

Philip Larkin. Humanity

was a faith we shared; observation

a gift we both practised.  I wanted

to borrow some of your other gifts

but you could not offer them.  And now

what I never had isn’t there –

just your face, no, I mean your faith,

at breakfast.

2009

Easter Poem

Amongst all that I have failed to forget,

here is the story I recall most vividly:

Easter morning, Auntie, hands behind back,

told us to leave the cardboard egg-trays,

stacked like shields on shelves in the scullery,

and pick up baskets she’d tied with posies;

then she ordered us out of the farmhouse.

We charged up the hill to the low metal shed

already warming in April’s gentle sun;

we remembered not to run in the battery,

for shrieking hens would peck each other.

There was kindness, for on rough wooden

tray nailed beneath pale, thin feet, eggs

had been taken, painted and replaced for Easter.

When we got back to the farmhouse, Auntie,

radio on, still washing her hands in the sink,

said we three were like little soldiers.

Did we not sit on the floor, throwing dice,

swapping eggs of purple and scarlet,

singing along to the popular songs,

heedless of those beyond the fences?

At Easter, let’s acknowledge the cruelties

that sustained our privileged acts of kindness,

trusting in what may comfort or haunt us:

that those we unknowingly tortured and killed

are risen, though wounded, still scarred,

calling us to meet lovingly again,

and with the folks in the village,

confess, forgive, keep faith in our goodness.