Prelude
O Lord always majestic is thy name.
No man may sing thy praises worthily
& mould’ring – wanting words to hear & see
is often in believers’ hearts thy fame.
Still yet we try with prose & harmony
to render mysteries in physic’s space:
depicting love as icons show thy face
to offer latria enfleshedly.
If Donne like saints, though sleeping, lend his grace
unlettered I make bold on pages ink’d
to build in classic form of couplets link’d
& structured verses, thus thy praises trace.
Lest Onan’s songs on formless pride I frame
Creator God the Word my words enflame.
I – Lazarus Saturday
Tiz better to have lov’d & lost: so said
the Bard when speaking of the heart’s romance.
What would he say of God & man who dance
As friends til mortal man is stoppéd dead?
Then God can weeping fall in mourner’s trance
While sisters, neighbors, pharisees, & all
will wonder at his healing advent’s stall:
when but one touch restor’d the blind man’s glance.
But God has come prophetic’ly to fall
the gates of death. Our Lover’s voice will part
hell’s ramparts. Raising Laz’rus by God’s art:
The tyrant soon will rule an empty hall.
Here he whom four days dead in darkness tread
Rejoices now and rests in his own bed
II – Palm Sunday
All glory laud & honor children sing:
to thee hosanna, Lord, hosanna! Praise
we thee with them, our olive branches raise.
Thy train in triumph through the gate we bring
With garments strewn the road to glory lays:
what ails the crowd that soon they’ll turn away?
Here where we hear hosanna cried today
great hearts will fail as darkness on them preys.
O Lord prevent our hearts that make essay
of crowning Thee as Israel’s King & God
from dancing to temptation’s tunes that prod
like cattle us, thine image thus to slay.
Let us not join them as thy hands they sting
with nails & in our name they kill their king.
Doxos 