I Saw A Crucifix
A Poem by Rowan Blair Colver
In my despair in night time darkness
And solemn thoughts of tiredness
During passionate willing to heal
In the circumference of depressive zeal
I saw the crucifix before me lean
Not so glorious golden and clean
A figure nailed to the shadowy wood
With hair all mottled and bloodied stood
Upon nails that pierced and pinched
Agonising props of the flesh inched
In with a heaviness of hammer and mind
The dying face was difficult to find
Among the gruesome aroma and sight
The silhouetted icon of purity and light
There on the head was a crown of barbs
Scratching the skull into notches and shards
I felt grief and pain for the picture appeared
A sudden lessening of personal fear
In comparison to the concentrated pain
Emanating from the figure now tamed
By the wood and the nail of man
Heavy breathing and gargled swill
Fluids forming reservoirs in the throat now still
No swallow no breath just gasps and twitch
Looking harder still I notice the head lift
My compassion jumped free when it appeared
I saw that the crows had feasted and sheered
An eye from its socket as the man had no fight
As it stood on his shoulder and plunged him into night
Of the right hand side of the condemned man
A black hole into nothing I began to understand
It wouldn't be written as it was too unlike love
To see such treatment of the baby from above
And then there was the death as I lay and saw
The figure on the cross spluttered no more
Then it was gone.
A Poem by Rowan Blair Colver
In my despair in night time darkness
And solemn thoughts of tiredness
During passionate willing to heal
In the circumference of depressive zeal
I saw the crucifix before me lean
Not so glorious golden and clean
A figure nailed to the shadowy wood
With hair all mottled and bloodied stood
Upon nails that pierced and pinched
Agonising props of the flesh inched
In with a heaviness of hammer and mind
The dying face was difficult to find
Among the gruesome aroma and sight
The silhouetted icon of purity and light
There on the head was a crown of barbs
Scratching the skull into notches and shards
I felt grief and pain for the picture appeared
A sudden lessening of personal fear
In comparison to the concentrated pain
Emanating from the figure now tamed
By the wood and the nail of man
Heavy breathing and gargled swill
Fluids forming reservoirs in the throat now still
No swallow no breath just gasps and twitch
Looking harder still I notice the head lift
My compassion jumped free when it appeared
I saw that the crows had feasted and sheered
An eye from its socket as the man had no fight
As it stood on his shoulder and plunged him into night
Of the right hand side of the condemned man
A black hole into nothing I began to understand
It wouldn't be written as it was too unlike love
To see such treatment of the baby from above
And then there was the death as I lay and saw
The figure on the cross spluttered no more
Then it was gone.
