This poem was originally composed as a post-Easter/Eastertide piece. It has enough resurrection pictures in it however to make it fit for our purposes here. Hence, I give you my Easter Sunday poetic offering, “Be-in-tween.”
It seems an eternity for what promised eternity
to wrest itself from dark and dank and deathly cell.
Yet hours have passed, not days and still can’t be
how you would show us life before death you fell.
* * *
Everything we gave and more to stand as one
in your reverie of newness, in time of all that comes
to quell and quiver and quash the forces of un-done
that hate and hold and hammer our daughters, our sons.
* * *
Our group was tall, like trees or hills, a truth to share
to all who hear or have not strength nor shame to hold
the weight of wait for that or this, the just or fair
awakened now but still shadow, pledge, a story told.
* * *
Why leave us in such mean estate of doubt, despair and dark
when but a word, a touch, a look all pain suspends,
and move, retool, redact the tepid toil our sorry ways embark
instead to choose what not you chose but placed in others hands depends?
* * *
But now what cryptic hint of empty rock-èd tomb bestirs
this rumored gossip that comes to taunt and tease, we rue
with quivered tongue and knees that buckle unsure
if this should be a joke, another tale to ruse, all hope undo?
* * *
Silly girls, you babble, burst and blubber forth what cannot be
the news of, what, we cannot say, except impossible to hear
and still remain in dark and desperate impossibility?
No longer face we fear of ending but ending of our fear?
* * *
If this be what I think I see then torn am I from all my knowing,
abandon now my shrinking soul and bursting out with heated heart
I clutch and grasp my tightened breast, my parch-ed throat, now stowing
what vestiges remain of sadness and remorse depart.
* * *
My brothers here and sisters, too, once shattered dreams reborn
as mist of doubt and pain of loss and waves of night congealed.
To satisfy, not mystify, was your intent. You shed the scorn
of those of them and us who turned to shame, our love concealed.
* * *
Severed from the death before, now living, path and joy to bring
you settle down to chat and dine and titillate with presence rare.
All that was then is not what now seems true or right to sing,
Still, in our time be-darked, be – in – tween, you trade your joy for our despair.
Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch
