Grave

Much later he would think about this day,
the dreadful silence broken by their grunts
as, shoulder to the heavy stone, they’d sway,
rock back and forth again, ‘til all at once
that gag upon the grave mouth rolled away
and left behind a gasp at all these stunts.
Then from within, one tooth in all that gape,
came Lazarus bone-white in linen drape.

He’d helped unwind the wrappings and set free
the body from the binding of its shroud.
If kings have longed to see what now we see,
he’d thought, then we are greater than the proud,
yet dare not raise our eyes.  How can it be?
His friend was strange to him in all that crowd.
What cannot happen happens at his word—
how can I hear what prophets never heard?

Yet so he had, and words had changed the world,
had filled it with a living, golden light,
and now the one who’d spoken it lay curled
in linen, too, sent down to endless night.
But still a golden sunrise had unfurled,
and somehow still the world was morning bright
though he had wrapped his friend in cerement span—
then he remembered Lazarus and ran.

The Raising of Lazarus', tempera and gold on panel by Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1310–11, Kimbell Art Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7125641