I ponder how He died, despairing once. <br />I've heard the cry subside in vacant skies, <br />In clearings where no other was. Despair, <br />Which, in the vibrant wake of utterance, <br />Resides in desolate calm, preoccupies, <br />Though it is still. There is no solace there. <br /> <br />That calm inhabits wilderness, the sea, <br />And where no peace inheres but solitude; <br />Near death it most impends. It was for Him, <br />Absurd and public in His agony, <br />Inscrutably itself, nor misconstrued, <br />Nor metaphrased in art or pseudonym: <br /> <br />A vague contagion. Old, the mural fades... <br />Reminded of the fainter sea I scanned, <br />I recollect: How mute in constancy! <br />I could not leave the wall of palisades <br />Till cormorants returned my eyes on land. <br />The mural but implies eternity: <br /> <br />Not death, but silence after death is change. <br />Judean hills, the endless afternoon, <br />The farther groves and arbors seasonless <br />But fix the mind within the moment's range. <br />Where evening would obscure our sorrow soon, <br />There shines too much a sterile loveliness. <br /> <br />No imprecisions of commingled shade, <br />No shimmering deceptions of the sun, <br />Herein no semblances remark the cold <br />Unhindered swell of time, for time is stayed. <br />The Passion wanes into oblivion, <br />And time and timelessness confuse, I'm told. <br /> <br />These centuries removed from either fact <br />Have lain upon the critical expanse <br />And been of little consequence. The void <br />Is calendared in stone; the human act, <br />Outrageous, is in vain. The hours advance <br />Like flecks of foam borne landward and destroyed.<br /><br />Navarre Scott Momaday<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/before-an-old-painting-of-the-crucifixion/
