Easter Rising

Easter Rising                                                                                

Who then devised the torment?  Love.

Love is the unfamiliar name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

That human power cannot remove. (T.S. Eliot)

At dawn on Easter Sunday bells proclaim

That Christ is risen. I have risen too

After a night of fire. Her Grecian name,

Kept ringing like Troy’s tocsin, since I knew,

For all her vows that long affair was over,

She’d spent the night entwined about her lover.

So all that night I’d worn the Nessus shirt

Of love, that clinging burns and burning sears.

I’d never realized how much love could hurt

Till, like a fool, I thought to void the years

That mocked my love and exiled us apart

And let her brand her name upon my heart.

Love is a god that bears no apostates

Who vainly build glass houses on soft sand.

Our separation -ordered by the Fates,

Enforced by Furies- how could we withstand

That dire decree that mocked my mad desire

To stay unharmed while flaming in love’s fire?

‘When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies.’[1]

Wisdom of age, passion and pride of youth

Contend - and at youth’s feet age bleeding lies.

My own Dark Lady, mistress to another,

Whom, she protests, she loves but as a brother!

Now all have risen: she to his demands

And he to hers, hot in her naked bed,

And I to meet my hangman’s harsh commands

As bound and shackled, to her stake I’m led,

Knowing full well that when we two next meet,

Smiling, she’ll heap more brushwood round my feet.

So Easter Sunday and its empty tomb

Offer no hope to one who loves in vain. 

There is no resurrection but the womb

For those who lost yet hope to love again.

While she makes love, swearing she’s his alone,

Chained to her stake, I’m burnt to blackened bone.

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[1] Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM