Woman Behold Your Son

                        I.
Birth.

Let darkness cover the cooling earth,
that mountains and valleys.
rivers and space
may wrinkle her tightening face.
Let matted glaciers veil her hair
and the wind of centuries,
that discarded dress,
wrap her bony shanks and parchment breasts
with rain-soaked leaves of winter.

Now enter.

Take from her fingers
the silver form 
she wore around her neck:
and place in her arms
the stillborn child,
the one she bore 
on a silver chain.

Say: Woman behold your son.

                        II.

Birth and death. Old as creation.
She alone and cold.
How old she is,
old and tired as death and creation.

Let there be light, light if only a single star.
For Mary kept all these things 
in her heart.  It will take three days.
Let it be far, but let there be light.

                        III.

And land separated water from water,
rains dropping from above on mountains.
There was a flood.

                        IV.

And the earth brought forth according to kind
upon the earth.

And that seed lying in a rock hewn tomb
who had entered stillborn from his mother’s womb,
re-entered once more his mother’s womb
and returned.

And those who returned to the tomb
returned.
stillborn as yet from the light
that had not returned
to tongues.

                        V.

And the light returned
and reflected from bronze
what two arms answered, reaching.
and an ancient priest, called Simeon,
opened the robe of the mother of God
and kissed the withered body.

And her voice returned the ascent of the dove:
“They shall need no sun. He is the light.”
And the priest reechoed the words:
“We shall need no sun.”

                        VI.

Birth… 
Let darkness cover the cooling earth.
And death…  Death and creation…
Woman, Behold your Son.