A  DIFFERENT  WAY

The Virgin Speaks

 

We had to go a different way –

I suppose it was to be expected –

Taking the path that snakes down into Egypt

And the rufous sands of our kindred

Country, shuffling the stones out of place,

The vegetation, itself acicular,

Resembling our abraded mood,

Fraught and fugitive.

 
Compelled by a pellucid dream,

We speedily forsook our homeland,

And the shabby stable enshrined by Grace,

Wherein the Spirit of our True Abode

Consumed us in its shimmering vision

And we did indeed possess

That Kingdom promised to our

Forefather, Abraham.

 

 

How soon the world's rapacious jaws

Were poised to trap the infant Hope of Israel.

Herod trod the warpath, his blood up, lest he be called

To forfeit power. Rather slay the nation's

Innocents, be sure the threat has died

The death, feasting can resume

And the illusion that he alone

Invents salvation.

 

 

No resting-place, no refuge then,

The night air gnawed the cheek-skin,

Yet the firmament above hosted the selfsame stars,

Their aspects changing subtly,

That guided men of wisdom,

Rulers of the East, and honest shepherds,

From a cold and rocky altitude

And garnered them.

 

 

Oh Abraham, hallowed patriach!

Spearhead of our toilsome path,

God pledged a race as populous as gems of heaven,

And you believed, but could not trust the manner

Of its coming. You, childless and disdained,

Took matters into your own hands,

Abetted by Sarah, true daughter of Eve,

And begot elsewhere

 

 

A bastard line, the Ishmaelites,

Born of your loyal housemaid, Hagar, who

Scorned her mistress' shrivelled womb and barren years,

Earned persecution for her spite and fled

Into the wilderness. It was those ancient footprints

We, the Holy Family, retraced, adjusting

Cosmic balance that quarter might be

Given to exiles.

 

 

Time's passed, is passing, will pass,

The sum of it , the essence, still distilling;

I am engulfed now in a radiant sphere, no mortal mind

Can bear the telling of. All lives, breathes peace:

Unclench your palm for Eucharistic Bread,

Earnest of that age-old pact, and you will

Richly gain a foretaste of this Land,

Bending to prayer.

 

 

The strife on earth does not abate,

And conflict scars the centuries for Jew

And Arab cousins. No ploughshare, no pruning-hook

Their arms foretell. Ire explodes and gushing blood

The soil stains. Sheol needs no further depths

When they distrust God's promised gift of

Inalienable territory, and shun

His different Way.

 

 

© Rosy Cole 2009