POEM: MEDITATION EASTER MORNING

MEDITATION EASTER MORNING

What is this morning's meaning,
this unfamiliar light,
early voices swirling like mist,
blood upon the winding sheet?

In this dawning silence, outside,
the living whirl in a ring of fire,
sporting masks of a thousand faces,
choosing each other's madness.

Here, crime is not one person's failure
but a nation's illness,
fulfilling lust with social levity,
where malice is mutual and different faiths
heat up the flames.

Now only the streets
carry exotic names of poets and flora.
All else is misery.

To love is to kill,
to laugh is to cry,
to kiss is to die...

The mind, in vain,
attempts to see a world
where wars have ceased,
where tears have dried,
and sorrow, pain and death
no longer breathe.

Then fetch me a guide,
a speck from the smallest star.
No, Tiresias, we'll be
as the blind leading the blind,
falling, perhaps, into the abyssmal truth
of knowing all.

So tear me away from my heart's havoc.
Let me rise this morning
with the risen One,
as he flourishes his seed
into trees of righteousness.
Let me be one of those plants,
whilst I meditate on how his light
has routed darkness.

JOE SALIBA