Easter Poem

SHEER LIFE

Jesus I’ve worshipped again and again in the beautiful and young
but was he a gaunt prophet, even ugly with fasting and praying,
travelling and teaching, thinking and doing, living and dying and living
again -
for his goodness appears in the human through what is imperfect,
where weakness makes an epiphany in the fabric of flesh?

We are not like swans which moult and renew their plumage year after year
to look like disguised princesses; in the human such sheerness is veiled
except in glimpses in smiles in touches in pain in forgiveness.

The sacred is not constructed, intended but can be discovered, created.
A lamb lies dead in the snow at Easter; one more infinitesimal death
yet some angel knows and we, however broken, must act as angels ourselves.


Tessa Ransford