Good Friday: 2006

"Dreamer" at the Palazzo San Miguel


GOOD FRIDAY 2006


And the Bishop of Manila
Saffron blind and poor
Says mass with two chisels
For women and for men.

—Lorca, “San Miguel”



It is Good Friday and why.
I am waiting for something
to tell me something
about why I am waiting

and for whom. It is not
the Bishop with the files
in his hands to saw down
the cross that has seen

so much pain in its name.
O when the cross
was just wood!
O when the bishop

was just a man and I was a man
like you and a woman
like you and the saffron
in the waterbowls

made their own daylight
in the shimmer of the butterlamps,
o when light
was only light, when the world
was enough of a mass to say.



Robert Kelly

Posted over on Ready Steady Book