Easter

   

 

This stone, white-chiseled, held Him;

This rock, Whereon was never body laid. 

This cavern heavy still with myrrh 

And sweetly-smelling death, enclosed

And chrysalised this Difference by

Night. Wherefore this tomb is virgin. 

And conceived between its iliac, crests

The change that Mary hid before. 

                    By night in darkness in the cloke

                    That there was thick as folds

                    Within unlit recesses of the hips

                    Was force, was life, was death

                    An hour another moment waxen

                    Warmed with stir of whispers from

                    The lung, and moistness wringing

                    From the tongue. The palms that

                    Dropped their diamonds afresh

                    To scintillate upon the stone,

                    And eyes not seeing now, but

                    Only to be seen, which lost a

                    Little light by being shaped of it;

                    The very resurrected Flesh held thus

                    In bondage and preserved from

                    Fission, instant, white, by power

                    And servitude of light. 

Unrecognised; the magnitude of snows

At dawn where never mountains were;

The truth discarnate and entire

Not first discernible or known

Emergent from the wheeling stone

In cataracts of fire; and

Yet in shapliness and height

With locks that stirred in wind

And held their dew-like wings

Of birds which fly throughout 

The night; that she might know her

Risen Lord and kneel in briars at his feet. 

So did he walk uncertainly

As one might walk in fathom

Depth beneath a mirror-laden sea;

So felt the drag of surfaces and stars

Above His bent and drowned head;

So spake, so bade her touch Him not,

New risen from the dead. 

All things made one; the screens

Of bone and tapestries of flesh

Rewoven and assumed in godly shape. 

Alone of love, of love alone that 

With a towering and a tender

Eye looked on her weeping and did

Staunch it instantly. 

                      But haste! My angels yet do light

                      The sepulcher that held my night. 

                      The little fowl of rock and tree

                      Do stir, and presently

                      Will start their foraging and song. 

                      Make haste my Mary, seek out them

                      Who still attend upon the grief

                      And tell the Christus now doth walk

                      In peace and majesty 

                      That they may turn their steps to me. 

Copyright -Gabriel Fielding 1955