Resurrection Poem

Resurrection Poem

Rise, therefore, beloved of Christ,

be like the dove 

that makes its nest in the heights in the mouth of a cleft

Dark in the morning, a lark chirps second dawn

She’s coming, silent 

the air behind anointed by her burden of

scented oils, that spilled on her hands as she sealed them

in flasks of skin, filled, then slung over both bent shoulders.

Her blue-lit way wends westward,

enshadowed feet tread towards the hill’s heavy ridge, the oil

too is heavy, grown heavy,

and her shoulders ache 

but forward 

still she ascends between the rocks now

and a chill of dawny dew breathes from the trees heavy hung

with buds of early fruit.

O hard heart, insane and impious

O human heart, 

you are harder than any hardness of rocks

Freed by the focus of her task from tears 

and from yesterday’s thought of the rot of rest

and the blank of future years ahead she looks wide-eyed, 

attending through the gloaming gloom,

—is this the way? I should be nearing…

Here is the place, there, cleft in the hill

she stops, gut drops sharp at the stoneless sepulcher’s mouth

she thinks of wild beasts, then of men, 

ducking quickened to gaze within—

Gold splits the dark 

double-dawn lit bright, 

too light to behold right 

the tomb is aglow and Not with torches,

she squints and crouches, 

oil flasks drop and burst and dribble perfume crowds the blazing cave

the radiance speaks:

Why seek ye the living among the dead?

Heel-turning tremble-kneed race-stumble back down the path 

He is not here, He is not here!

Whoever you are, 

run

with living desire!

Annotations:

Lines 1-3: This poem begins with the intermingled words of Bonaventure's Tree of Life (pg 155) and the prophet Jeremiah. Here we have a prefiguring of Mary Magdalene’s ascent to the gravesite, paired with the image of the ascending of the tree of life (which is also an image of the cross). Mary Magdalene, who was loved by Christ, is in some sense heeding the words of the prophet, going up to be with the dead Christ, if only for a visit. 

Line 4: The poem immediately drops us into the dark of pre-dawn, replacing the typical ‘early’ with ‘dark’ to emphasize that Christ is not known to be risen yet, that the disciples (Mary Magdalene in particular) is still ‘in the dark’. We have a bird singing here as well, prefiguring the Angel who in turn will prefigure Christ, announcing joy even when all still seems dark. 

Lines 5-8: Now the poem brings us close to the figure of Mary Magdalene walking to the tomb with oils to anoint the body. Echoing the account in the book of John, she is alone. The fact that she spilled oil on her hands is on one hand a practical detail, as she likely would be perfumed with the perfumes she had concocted, but it also suggests that she, like Christ, has been anointed for death in some sense. These lines also emphasize her labor and her burden that she carries, both very much for Christ. 

Lines 8-16: These lines carry the poem forward along Mary Magdalene’s lightening path - as the day grows lighter her burden grows heavier, but she moves ever forward towards the tomb. The landscape shifts and becomes up-hill, and there are two images of rockiness - first the poem says she is ascending among rocks now, and then we have the images of trees, “heavy-hung” (recalling the cross, of course) but hung with unripe fruit, which we can imagine as little rock-like plums and peaches and pomegranates etc. 

Lines 17-19: Here the image of the rocks and unripe fruits are paired with the language of Bonaventure (pg. 155 and 137), bemoaning the hardness of his heart, which he says is “harder than any rock.” But the image of an unripe fruit is essential here because it shows a rock with the potential to soften, to ripen, to turn into a more heart-like thing. A bud of early fruit is also an image of expectancy, and the poem here is increasingly charged with anticipation of what Mary Magdalen will find. 

Lines 20-23: Here there is reemphasized the sense that this morning is different from the last days of mourning, that while Mary’s experience may be of the relief of having a task, there is also a notable relief from tears that comes with the task of bringing herbs to the tomb. As is specified in the gospel of (?), the women who prepared the herbs would have rested the day before as it was the sabbath, and not been able to attend to the body. Of course while observance of the sabbath was required for Jewish lawfulness, I imagine the women would have been disturbed by the thought of Jesus’ body unanointed, rotting while they rested. And of course the time immediately following the death of Jesus must have been rife with all sorts of questions and confusions about the future - the gospel accounts repeatedly emphasize that the disciples did not understand or believe that Christ was going to rise, so their conjectures about the future may have been quite grim at that time. Mary Magdalene in particular, of course, had been demon-possessed and prostituted prior to encountering Christ, and may have dreaded the possibility of a future resembling her past. 

Lines 23-29: Here we see Mary first wondering whether she’s in the right place - she’s only been here once, if at all, and it is dark. Then the moment of recognition coupled with the stomach-drop of seeing the stone rolled away. 

Lines 30-37: Here we have a change in the rhythm and sounds of the poem as Mary looks inside the tomb and sees the angel(s). She drops the oils and they spill onto the floor, crowding the senses not only with the piercing radiance of the angel but with the smell of the “stream of the oil of gladness” (Bonaventure, 171) that Bonaventure writes about in the Tree of Life. 

Lines 38-42: The poem cuts to her race back to the other disciples, showing her fear and her confusion. We then get a final echo of Bonaventure (pg. 171), who at the end of the Tree of Life tells us too to run. 

-Alice