Holy Monday 3rd April
From: The Spirit of Place by Adrienne Rich
The work of winter starts fermenting in my head
How (with the hands of a lover or a midwife)
To hold back till the time is right
Force nothing, be unforced
Accept no giant miracles of growth
By counterfeit light
Trust roots, allow the days to shrink …
Here in the north where winter has a meaning
Where nothing is promised
Learn what an underground journey
has been, might have to be
Holy Tuesday 4th April
i carry your heart by e e cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Holy Wednesday 5th April
The Bright Field by R S Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
Maundy Thursday 6th April
Still, like a Child by Andrew Rudd
Like a child
still in the womb
I pray, my knees bent
and my head bowed.
Like a child
still in the womb
I wait, trembling at the largeness
of the world
into whose incomprehensible hands
You will deliver me.
Good Friday 7th April
When the Time’s Toxins by Christian Wiman
When the time’s toxins
have seeped into every cell
and like a salted plot
from which all rain, all green are gone
I and life are leached
of meaning,
somehow a seed
of belief
sprouts the instant
I acknowledge it:
little weedy hardly-would-be
greenness
tugged upwards
by light
while deep within
roots like talons
are taking hold again
of this our only earth
Saturday 8th April
While it was Still Dark by Rod Key
No
not the great shout he’s risen –
not there –
the imperceptible point of
now
is in the stone-sealed linen-wrapped dark in
unconscious earth
there
eternity’s born in
that
first stirring of the blood