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Easter Morning
for René Girard
Quick as dawn, the dogwoods have raised
improbable awnings, christened with rain.
Thrusts of witch-hazel, stands of rue,
and there—there, across the stream,
in the shade of those dark-lichened rocks—
white phlox and geranium strain
to reach the angled light. One bright
morning, a clean April day,
amazes familiar paths with a green
tangle and baizes the winter’s stain.
Faster each Easter, my daughter flies
past tumbled rocks where brambles grow.
The bloodroots flower near her feet
as delicate as bible leaves,
and slow, persistent ivy kindles
on old trees. The year will know
a fresh redemption: burning green,
the green trees glow—till ash
and thorn fall back to sleep
in counterpanes of barren snow.
Beneath such trees, with hand and knife,
cold priests once tried to mend the leaf—
the root, the branch: these deadened woods
that need fresh life to grow.
A lamb, a child: the winter’s snow
would melt in their warm blood—and grief
by grief, pain revenged by pain,
we paid the sacrificial debt
that swells with each repaying death.
And where shall we look for love’s relief?
My daughter runs by the brief flowers:
touch-me-nots among the stones,
bluebells and sorrels, solomon’s seal.
Every spring pretends a pity
for all the pretty, short-lived things.
Last night I watched the fire zones,
the sudden plumes of tracer rounds:
blooms of war on the TV news.
And now in these green woods I see
the graves of gods and a grove of bones.
History labors, a worn machine
sick with torsion, ill-meshed,
and every repair of an old fault
ruptures something new. The sacred
knife and hands are gone from the woods,
but winter’s blood still springs refreshed
and an altered world still summons death.
As long as we endure ourselves,
innocence will come to grief
and mercy must remain unfleshed.
The parish bells begin their carols,
down through the trees like flourished prayer
the Easter call resounding. Time
reaches forward, hungry for winter,
and what will save my daughter when even
hope is caught in the ancient snare?
A cold fear waits—till all that had fallen,
all that was lost, rudely broken,
crossed in love, comes rising, rising,
on the breath of the new spring air.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>
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It's good to see a poem done in accentual meter, which is not used often enough! And this one is beautifully done, musical, with the lines linked together by an ear-delighting array of sound devices, including alliteration, vowel-rhymes, and perfect rhyme both at the ends and within the lines.
The stanzas progress from observation of nature in stanza one to religious imagery and the introduction of the young daughter in stanza two, to such unexpected but aptly-introduced themes in successive stanzas as human sacrifice, the need for some payment of the debt incurred by sinning man, the fragility of life, the current war, daily danger, the hunger for redemption and the need for change and renewal. Finally, in the triumphal final stanza, hope enters with the tolling of the Easter bells, and a recognition of hope itself--the "rising, rising" of hope--not to obliterate the fear, but to signal a way beyond it.
The immediacy of this poem, a poem that could easily have become impersonal philosophy, comes from the contained passion of the language, the powerful imagery, and the use of the daughter--the living child persuasively suggested in motion--to represent what we love most and fear for most acutely. The reader need not be religious to grasp, and respond to, what this poem is singing.
~Rhina
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