nails, the taunts, the spear,
Till water flowed with blood to wash
The whole world free of fear.
At last the song that David sung
Is heard and understood:
“Before the nations God as King
Reigns from his throne of wood.”
This wood now spread with purple wears
The pageantry of kings;
Of chosen stock it dares to hold
On high his tortured limbs.
O blessed Tree, upon whose arms
The world’s own ransom hung;
His body pays our debt and life
From Satan’s grasp is wrung.
O sacred Cross, our steadfast hope
In this, our Passiontide,
Through you the Son obtained for all
Forgiveness as he died.
May every living creature praise
Our God both one and three,
Who rules in everlasting peace
All whom his cross makes free.
PROBLEM OF EVIL
God made Man free
to get things wrong:
He made the atom,
we the bomb.
INFINITE PATIENCE
God lets
his Son
be stretched
against
the earth
and nailed
to the wood
of the world
behold
the mystery
of infinite
patience
that
God
should create
a being
able
to see
and love
or blindly
hate
then patiently
wait
and not
stop
the entire
show
when an innocent
child
weeps in the
night
or his Son
is stretched
against
the world
and brutally
nailed
NAILS
It is the consequences
of our actions
that condemn
by their enormity
the moments of our weakness
each moment of blind folly
blazing
whether behind the wheel, the blade
or in the bed
begets
undreamt of sadness
taboos used
to keep, like barbed wire,
us from our lusts
now
taboos are gone
and we abuse
God's mercy
we claim the freedom
to make children
of fake love
and temporary union
we claim the freedom
to hire our minds
for a passing high
and, bored with being
merely human,
aim to be briefly gods
we authorize
a mother who
cannot forget
the babe she feeds
to kill her child
before she sees its face
and if a mother
is authorized
to kill her child
what's to stop me, brother,
kicking you
out of my womb
we
