And this is comfort:
that when the children cry
the Man of Sorrows
suffers too.
Eternity encircled
and enclosed
the crossbar
of his suffering
with the despair of ages,
all our griefs
and every
ruination
choking out
the Breath of Life.

Heart broken
under awful weight
of every horror,
pain and burden,
he was crushed.
His throbbing lifeblood
spurted down
a tree he sculpted,
soaked into
the soil he made,
soil filled again
with loathing at
the brother’s blood
poured down its gullet.

And so the curse
was nullified,
the gaping break repaired,
innocence and love
the capital
that freed us.
He knows our tears
from inside out;
he cried them all.
And now he holds
the hurting world
in his embrace
and waits for us
to hug him back.

© Linnea Boese, 2001