Three Poems for Holy Week

Renunciation

They once were mine,
These hands that played
Upon their shrine
Of ebon, tusk;
These hands that sang
Of heroes' wreaths,
The wreaths of maids,
And maidens' plaints.

Now silent, still,
The fingers weave
A chapel roof
Where slow tears drop
And drop and pool
While prayers sigh
And sigh and moan
Into the nave.

They once were mine,
These chastened wings,
As wings once chaste
Now crimsoned, cracked—
Into those hands,
My Lord, my God,
These I commend
That once were mine.


Simon

I once had all the answers
safely nested away.
I once knew who I was
and the path I was to take.
Why, then, did I pause to look?
Why interrupt the evenness
my life had become,
the status quo that beat
so assuredly in the hollow
where my heart was to have been?
But for my curiosity
the answers would still be mine.
One casual glance erased forever
those easy, formulaic solutions
and chanced to rest on the face
that now gives me no rest.
Streaked and stricken, it haunts me still,
gripping my soul with its
unspeakable pain and sorrow
born of a love I did not then
and cannot now fathom.
Yoked with him beneath the wood
I looked into his eyes,
and all my answers were lost,
forever drowned in that cup where
taking dies and
giving is eternally reborn.
No, it was not my choice.
And he was not my Lord.
But I shouldered his yoke
and trod in his steps,
leaving behind
my tidy nest of answers
and the self I knew
to become forever
His.


An Ecstasy

"No greater love than this."

My love, my love,
the unspoken word
Thou givest me who sought Thee,
I shall clasp within
this inner sanctum,
that my soul be branded
with its Cross, girded
with its diadem of grief.
Clear as the light
upon Thy limbs,
vivid as the blood
upon Thy brow—
with this fleeting, searing,
unspoken word
Thou hast answered me.
My love, my love,
Thy face is veiled
with the shadow
of my unworthiness; still,
I know Thy eyes,
laden with blows of ignorance
and arrogance.  Thy thorns
pierceth me through.
I cannot speak nor move,
but only weep; for,
mutely groaning, Thou turnest
Thy face to leave me
once more alone.

My love, my love, I ask you again
yet know too well I cannot bid you back,
nor would I; but live content that you,
o flame of my soul, warm me still.


© Leticia Austria