Maundy Thursday Night, A Poem in Two Parts. (Revised Version).

                   1.

         The Waiting.

Pitch black
The Hand of God resting over us
Shadowing the interior of the church
With an intensity of sorrow
That average grief cannot touch.

The candles flicker in the fierce gloom
Like sparks of winter starlight
Refracted through sheets of melting ice.
I shiver in the darkness
Feeling intensely lost, alone,
Although the silent church is crowded.

Scarcely breathing
The sombre congregation kneels in prayer
Before the stripped altar, the vacated shrine;
The absolute emptiness that veils the eternal.
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed amongst fresh cut flowers
And am struck by a searing pang of loss.

Today and yesterday and tomorrow
Come together in this single moment
That seems to exist outside linear time.
Christ, who found good in every man,
Opened dead eyes with the power of compassion,
Now prays alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.

We kneel in the crowded dark of the chapel
Seeking to empathize with the heart broken Saviour
But finding no words that are adequate;
Our imaginations too tame to envisage such sorrow;
Our emotions confined to the world as we know it.

                        
                     2.

            The Arrest.

Traversing a distant rock strewn valley
The traitor and guards are marching to claim Him
For the whip, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns.
His ferocious cry of desolation,
Wild, like that of an injured animal,
Reverberates bleakly into our lives
Although we can barely imagine Him.
A cry that could not anticipate
The enigma that is salvation.

Under the twisted olive boughs
Deaf to all prayer
His disciples remained locked in sleep
Like untroubled children.
We, in this blacked out London church
Keep hidden our private fears and failings
Whilst trying to hope, beyond clear reason,
That we could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that surely, dare not happen?.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 29th. - 30th. 2013.
Re-written April 17th. - 19th. 2014.