a funny thing happened on the way to decorum

(Despite all the aspects of her poetry about which critics might readily complain, C-Rose seriously shuts them all down when she churns out a contemplative jewel like this.)

Good Friday

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

     That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop

    Thy blood’s slow loss,

    And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

    Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

    Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

    Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

    I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,

    But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

    And smite a rock.

Pantoums are one of those poetic forms that, when done well, look deceptively easy to write. They are NOT easy to write.

This poem’s knocking around at Christ Church this evening for Maundy Thursday. I discovered it in a recent issue of Image.

Pantoum for Seven Words | Amy Newman

Forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.
Blood, veins, infinity, the garden, your words
in metaphor: the whole story rises dark blue
in the trees’ green burdens, drenched with voice.

Blood, veins, infinity, the garden, your words
all dissolve, like the story itself, to myth
in the trees. Green burdens drenched with voice
blur the stories, insist and transform, bright leaves.

All dissolve, like the story itself, to myth.
A million habits arrange and rearrange
blur. The stories insist and transform bright leaves
beneath which, birds preening: forlorn, lost shapes.

A million habits arrange and rearrange,
provide: to shift, adjust, put right, perfect.
Beneath which birds, preening forlorn lost shapes,
is the first tree, the dark encroachment and the rest?

Provide: to shift, adjust, put right, perfect.
In metaphor the whole story rises dark blue.
Is the first tree the dark encroachment? And the rest?
Forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.