Early Easter Morning
a meditation on David Jones’ “Resurrection” (1926)
Who is this, rising, not yet risen? Sheered, blackened, lined with worry, keeling like a righting ark? Gaunt, pale, uneven, tongue-tied, ears ringing, inky hand drawn up obliquely, one foot still dead in the grave? Just one of the Joneses, leading out; last of the disappearing men so beautiful. What does he see, not facing us? Awed, awkward, almost graceless, this mass materializing before our forbidding eyes, passing by into the impassable white, wounds yet wide, still coursing life and light? The son of the mother under the tree, knowing the worst of us; your very own. Count, count the unmistakable marks! Sing, sing the unsingable part! He is the warrior, newly home from the wars, Shell-shocked, unblinking, regathering flesh and bone. Half-alarmed at his own body, half-ashamed to be alive— utterly oblivious to the cries of jubilation welling from the darkness dying at his back.