Pieta's Ode

O that grief in stone alone would tell That passage from life's cross to hell For having been born we begin the process Of our unbecoming, a very subtle knell Tolled on beads of faith in counter spell All of death's exacting claim and duress. But this Christ cast down by the evil it The thing he did make subduing spirit To take its flight from flesh, and leave the leather Gnarled and twisted, so death inhabit There God in convulsions truths admit Is more than just change, or state of weather Walk me through the crowd again, fled From the picture, hear the hollow dread, The dismal cry before existential emptiness The brittle bonds of broken Godhead The loneliness for sin that stood my stead It tells upon even stone in lifeless grimace How clever in work each chisel caught there Languid form, and pity in the stare-less stare The naked moment of our point of death foretold The diligence against the strain of all fear The sombre moment lurid on the dismal air God is one with man, so man may grace the fold. But in this deposition with self imposed I see More than just a comment on self history I see the co-opted glory of an alien race The transposition of a marginal identity The subjugation of faith to human mastery Birthed and centered in death's callous place. Go on you worshipers of idols in griefs of stone Martyr yourselves for adulation of the throne Art is memory that only tells in part our intent The cross' silent purpose by sage sins condone The longing to remove God and take his zone Of time and space for preferred devilment. I before no pieta bow, let the mad man die alone Man came from the earth and O the worth unknown To hold his God not as dead thing, but life summed Through faith and gift of grace, a worthiness of throne After the marble is cut, look out for the single stone Toppling kingdoms in its roll as bright Jesus come.