Easter This stone, white-chiseled, held Him;This rock, Whereon was never body laid. This cavern heavy still with myrrh And sweetly-smelling death, enclosedAnd chrysalised this Difference byNight. Wherefore this tomb is virgin. And conceived between its iliac, crestsThe 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 snowsAt dawn where never mountains were;The truth discarnate and entireNot first discernible or knownEmergent from the wheeling stoneIn cataracts of fire; andYet in shapliness and heightWith locks that stirred in windAnd held their dew-like wingsOf birds which fly throughout The night; that she might know herRisen Lord and kneel in briars at his feet.
So did he walk uncertainlyAs one might walk in fathomDepth beneath a mirror-laden sea;So felt the drag of surfaces and starsAbove His bent and drowned head;So spake, so bade her touch Him not,New risen from the dead.
All things made one; the screensOf bone and tapestries of fleshRewoven and assumed in godly shape. Alone of love, of love alone that With a towering and a tenderEye looked on her weeping and didStaunch 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
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 snowsAt dawn where never mountains were;The truth discarnate and entireNot first discernible or knownEmergent from the wheeling stoneIn cataracts of fire; andYet in shapliness and heightWith locks that stirred in windAnd held their dew-like wingsOf birds which fly throughout The night; that she might know herRisen Lord and kneel in briars at his feet.
So did he walk uncertainlyAs one might walk in fathomDepth beneath a mirror-laden sea;So felt the drag of surfaces and starsAbove His bent and drowned head;So spake, so bade her touch Him not,New risen from the dead.
All things made one; the screensOf bone and tapestries of fleshRewoven and assumed in godly shape. Alone of love, of love alone that With a towering and a tenderEye looked on her weeping and didStaunch 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