HALLOWED-HARROWED EARTH

The Lamentations of Jeremiah (1955) Fritz Eichenberg Rosenwald Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

by JOHN EMRYS VAN MAREN

Who can speak the ruin wreaked by God on yearning hearts? The lonesomeness of lovelorn scattered minds Perusing shattered remnants of the past, Examining each stone — remembering just where it fit — And pulling tears and tears and prayers from what is gone forever; Or the bone-deep sorrow of a mother — arms evacuate And eyes bled dry — staring at the rumpled empty cradle?

Grief can’t be teased out from what once was, The only cure we know is amputation of the whole Like Alexander severing the knot And making moot the prophecy In violent avoidance and contempt.

Yet the heart insists there is a way To gather up the fragments that remain, Pick up our joys and sorrows and maintain To all — but most especially ourselves — That these things are precisely what they are And will remain unreconciled, worthy of our tears, Until at last (or always, or already, maybe), Grace in great abundance like a Spring announced by flowers Leaps from harrowed ground.

JOHN EMRYS VAN MAREN is a writer living in New York and a parishioner at the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, a Roman Catholic parish on 34th St.