In the Ear of Christ

I

Christ, with your fresh-sliced skin:

Christ, with your river-emptying veins:

these poor people of the world are dead

of laxity, of fear, of cold.

You are at the head of their beds,

(if they have you), in a form too bloody,

without the tenderness that women love,

and with those marks of violent life.

They would not spit at you for being crazy,

but they would not be able to love you either,

their impetus is too slack, too worn.

Because like Lazarus they already stink, already stink;

better not to move, than to disintegrate.

Not love -- not hate -- wrings a cry from them.

II

They admire the elegance of gesture and color:

but in your wooden contortion --

your blood-sweat, your last shudder,

and the purple brilliance of Calvary --

it seems to them there is exaggeration

and plebeian taste; one who wept like you,

had thirst and suffering, would not let

those two bright tears congeal in his eyes.

Their own are dull eyes of damp tinder

without virtue of weeping (that cleans and cools);

their mouths are loose buttons,

wet and lascivious (not firm, not red),

and like the end of autumn: so unstrung

and polluted the cores of their hearts.

III

Oh Christ! May pain make that soul alive,

which you gave them and which has fallen asleep,

return it, deep and sensitive,

to the house of bitterness, passion, and outcry.

Gaffs, irons, claws which tear your flesh

as if it were fruit or a sheaf being shared;

flames that catch on your sectioned flesh,

flames like rings or knives --

weeping, weeping in warm streams,

renew the cloudy glass of those eyes

and restore the old fire of their gaze.

Sprout them from your innermost heart, Christ!

Or if that is impossible, if they are ruined bedstraw,

come down, and scatter them on the winds.


~Gabriela Mistral