Good Friday Afternoon

Walter Pompe, Crucifix, 1771 (ivory, wood), Detroit Institute of Arts (source: https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/crucifix-66253)

Oblative Ablation (draft)

Quis credidit auditui nostro? (Isaiah liii)

O sacked and sacred, sore and wounded — hear! — 
You wicked wending winded wounding world:
Do you not see? Hear nought of in your ear
The heart that cross times’ hellish shaft’s been hurled?

Behold the coronary mercy-seat
Who holds the world that holds it as an ark.
Would you hard-hold that heart whose always-beat
looks beaten now but’s beating back the dark?

Louder! the three-pulsed chord athrob: the cen-
ter of the world Your breast pressed, ínstressed, seized.
And yet — mine eyes have drifted to pretend
the creature’s now an end whose life’s not leased.

But still on earth there’s one place You’re unleashed:
You live wherever there is now a priest.