The Crucifixion by Fr. John W. Lynch continued . . .

The light is bronze against Him in a sheet
Of stilled, unblinking time that does not move,
Nor yield, nor cease until a shimmering
Like golden curtains comes, and looking down,
He finds that time has folded to a a long,
Bright, gleaming coronal, and she is there.
He does not look away, He watches her,
And the light that was a crown about her, breaks,
Increases, brightens, and becomes a path
Where she is mounting, mounting up to Him,
Not for comfort, not for any kiss
Of soothing, not to lessen Him nor ask
His hands refuse these nails for Infancy:
Not soften, not unloose the years!
He seeks her here and in her heart He finds
Too deep a silence for the need of tears,
For new Announcement bleeds in her, so old
It is Gethsemani, and Nazareth,
Fused and sealed within a single will
That still is crying: ‘This be done to me.’

‘Woman, behold thy Son.‘

The dark was like a thin, descending shroud
Of cold that closed around the world and left
Him shivering beneath an ashen sun.
The wind was chill upon Him, stirred His hair
In faint and lonely movement, and the dust
That lay along the barren rocks had raised
And sifted softly when the wind had gone.
He was alone: and in His hands the nails
Were cinders of a fire once and flamed
And reddened in His blood, but now had dulled
To crusting of a spread, accustomed pain,
Without a plan.  He ha wearied of His crown;
His head that had bowed upon His breast
Tossed upward in search of any friend,
To find around Him blackness and the deep,
Unstarred abysses where creation’s Word
Has hung no light or mercy to the blank
Rejections of a worse than primal dark,
The wind that knifed across His shivered soul
Came cutting from the frozen lids of Hell . . .

‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’