James Matthew Wilson

Jesus Is Condemned

• I tried to think for half an hour
• About the face of earthly powers
• That would condemn a god to die.

• I listened for its menacing cackles,
• The crack of whips, the clank of shackles,
• And searched for dark flames in the eye.

• Through the church window I heard shrieks
• Of ambulances whose techniques
• Efficiently undo our wounds;

• The certain hum of homeward motors,
• A candidate’s rank appeal to voters,
• In these its stare and voice I found.

• For we sit kind, when comfort’s here,
• But draw our weapons with our fears
• Should we one pleasure be denied.

Jesus Meets His Mother

• Her face seems calm, when he descries her
• Dark mantle, and sees that her eyes are
• Counting the deep strokes on his back,

• Noting where woven thorns imprinted
• Kingship on his brow, how rust-tinted
• With damp the dust runs in his track.

• He feels her kiss against his shut eye,
• And tries to tell her he will not die.
• She says she’ll see him through the race.

• After all, she’s heard all his words;
• Her heart received them undisturbed,
• And undisturbed, now, her soft face.

• But, the authorities speak with one accord:
• That heart is pierced by seven swords
• And bleeds for being so full of grace.

James Matthew Wilson’s most recent books are Some Permanent Things and The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry.