Good Friday in Taranto Italy

Reposting this blog from two years ago when I was in Italy for Good Friday, because the need for communal grieving is even more now than it was then. “We learn to love/in grief/as one.” I have been waiting and waiting
for the forgiveness of grief
and transmutation of sorrow.
How can I make my own peace?
Anger in my heart
puts anger in the world.
I say I can walk away but something
stubborn in me won’t.
Righteous even as I decry
my righteousness.

What angel can help me,
what being with wings
lift me from my pride?
I stick in stiff sin.
Oh angels come and soften me
The procession of offenses I have taken
only holds me from my ease.

Sorrow in the air,
while the mother’s son goes to die.
Nothing small can matter anymore.
Pride cannot displace this grief.
Let me give over now, to tears.

Any moment I can die.
Shall I then die angry?
I go instead to sorrow.
It is my son they carry dead.
My own lying lifeless
his side gashed red and open.

Madre Dolorosa, what if
it were mine they hurt and hurt,
and I like you without a recourse.
Were it my son whose face is covered
and could never breathe again,
how could I myself
take breath once more?

But the child we mourn belongs to all,
the one we sorrow for is ours.
Mother we grieve as one,
Mother we tire, we weaken, as one.
We love, we learn to love,
at last, in grief, as one.

Dolorosa, all our lives
we wait for your appearance
Our children borne and protected
have come to suffering and ruin,
their world as broken as his body.
Such need we have to grieve with you!

©Susa Silvermarie 2019